Mail subfolder vanished

[JE]

Outlook 2007: Yesterday one of the subfolders I had created under "Inbox" can
no longer be found. It contained many emails, some read, some unread.

None of these is found using search (set to search all folders) with terms
that should turn them up.

My first thought was that I must have inadvertently dragged the folder into
another, but I checked all the folders, and anyway, it seems "search" would
have found the contents.

My second thought was that I must have inadvertently deleted it, but it's
not in the "deleted items" folder, and I don't use permanent delete by habit.

My next thought was that perhaps the .pst file had become corrupt, so I ran
scanpst.exe, but it didn't report any lost items, and nothing new turned up
when I reopened Outlook.

Does anyone have any other ideas what might have happened, and what I might
do to recover this folder and its contents?

(I am not using Exchange.)

 

[DL]

If you have searched for mail that you know should be there, and it isnt,
then you would need to check with your backup or archive

 

[JE]

I should have added that the folder is present in the backup .pst file.
However, it is missing the emails received since the last backup. I'd like to
recover the folder with those recent emails, and also figure out how it
disappeared.

--JE

 

[JE]

Aha! I solved it, using this method:

http://outlook-tips.net/howto/recover_deleted.htm

Essentially, I deliberately corrupted my .pst file (after making a backup
copy), and ran scanpst.exe on the corrupted file. This restored all my
deleted folders and emails, and revealed the source of my original error: as
I'd suspected, I'd inadvertently dragged the missing folder into another
folder--but the reason I couldn't find it was: the folder I'd dragged it into
was the "Junk Mail" folder, which I emptied as usual, not noticing my folder
was in it. And emptying the "Junk Mail" folder does not move the items into
the "Deleted Items" folder, unlike deleting normal folders.

When I forced scanpst.exe to REALLY recover all lost files, by deliberately
corrupting it, it found all the deleted items, including those deleted
"permanently" from the "Junk Mail" folder.

Perhaps this may be helpful to someone else....