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mails are disappearing from the outlook(exchange) account

Hi experts

I have a weird problem with one of your employees mailbox.
From time to time mails seem to disappear. My employees says that he didnt delete them.
But they can neither be found in outlook nor in owa or Exchange via Iphone.
I checked if outlooks view is filtered, which is not the case. I searched every folder of outlook, no success.
The mail was delivered, I checked that via Exchange Mangement console.

I'm using outlook 2003 and exchange 2003 on a windows 2003 server.

Hope you can help

prashant_sawant

If your mail disappears as soon as you've read it, it's probably because you're using a read-only view. The default Outlook setting for the preview or reading pane is Mark as read after 5 seconds and when the view refreshes the message is hidden. It's less of a problem with Outlook 2003 because the view isn't refreshed until you leave a folder and return or press F5.

If you're using Exchange and you see the message arrive in the Inbox and it immediately disappears, you likely have a *.pst configured as the default delivery location. With the *.pst set as the default delivery location, the messages are moved out of the mailbox and into the *.pst as they arrive in Outlook. Verify the profile is using the Exchange mailbox as the message store not a personal message store. Look for this setting in Tools, Email accounts, View or change existing email accounts. It's at the bottom of the Account manager dialog. In Outlook 97/98/2000, look for account properties using the Tools, Services dialog.

Member_2_3654191

Maybe he did setup email archiving and opted to delete mail instead of moving to a PST?

What do you mean with "from time to time"?

Arikael

ASKER

Hi

@The_Kirschi
Archiving is disabled
From time to time means 1 or 2 mails per week. The user says he didn't delete them.

@parshant_sawant
as only very few mails disappear, I don't think this may cause the problem (I checked mails don't get delivered to a pst)

Member_2_3654191

Maybe mails are marked as Junk and Junk folder is configured to delete items?

Otherwise I would suspect iPhone as guilty somehow.

Arikael

ASKER

I checked the junkfilter.
Outlook said, that I cannot use the junkfilter, since it's running in online mode.
But after this message I saw that the filter is set to the lowest level and the "delete junk" mark is not checked.
Strange.

The user said he had this problems also before he used his iphone

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prashant_sawant

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Arikael

ASKER

My thoughts exactly

But the user aka my boss was very persistent.
Is it perhaps possible to turn on some logging-mechanism to see when and if mails get deleted?

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Arikael

ASKER

Thanks, I'll check that on the server and report back.

prashant_sawant

No u cannot track the mails from outlook, So 4get of the mechanism. Please ensure and educate the user to make sure that the mails are very rarelly deleted automatically until there is a thid party software at ur end which can cause the issue.

prashant_sawant

Arikael has the issue resolved. Awaiting for your reply.

Arikael

ASKER

Hi, sorry

Sorry for not coming back.
I checked the the hard deleted emails like here: http://www.petri.co.il/using_owa_2003_to_recover_deleted_items.htm

it seems the mails are there, so the user must have deleted them