Trying to stop Outlook 2002 from deleting old mail

[Don Taylor]

Gave my mother a Dell a few years ago, Win XP, Office 2002, etc.
She uses Outlook 2002 to handle her email.

So I'm visiting and it is the usual string of things that don't work.

I've managed to figure out and fix most of them. But I can't find a
way to get Outlook to stop appearing to be deleting all mail older
than a week. It isn't that they are being put into archive, I've
already checked that. Actually there was no archive folder anywhere
on the entire machine when I first checked. But I did provoke it to
create an archive, just to see if it would fail and perhaps that was
the problem, nope, will make an archive if I push it into it.

But I cannot find out why it is deleting the old mail.

I've tried to do my homework first, searched help, searched microsoft,
searched old newsgroup postings, found a few things but none of them
seem to match this or give me any clue.

I am assuming there is an option set somewhere that is telling it to
delete the mail. Does anyone know where I should poke to tell it to
NEVER delete the mail? (I've already turned off the archiving on all
the individual folders so she won't be confused by mail disappearing
into there.)

Lots of free disk space, no errors, some of the patches in place and
I'm downloading more while I'm still here, cleaning up, etc.

Thank you

 

[SteveL]

It is actually archving into a archive.pst file. You have
to turn off archiving in outlook click tools/options/ then
the other tab, select archving, and uncheck arching click
ok.
Does she want them back? YES open outlook, click
file/Import&Export select default (import from another pgm
or file) click next, scrol down 1 page and choose personal
folder file (*.pst), file to import click browse and
choose archive click next and finish the process.

Godd Luck

 

[Don Taylor]

It is actually archving into a archive.pst file. You have
to turn off archiving in outlook click tools/options/ then
the other tab, select archving, and uncheck arching click
ok.

Sorry, no, as I said in my original message, it is not archiving
into an archive.pst file. I searched the entire system for any
"archive" or "pst" files long before I gave up and posted this
to the newsgroup. There were none of these files on the system.
The emails appear to actually be being deleted on the 7th day.

Does she want them back? YES open outlook, click
file/Import&Export select default (import from another pgm
or file) click next, scrol down 1 page and choose personal
folder file (*.pst), file to import click browse and
choose archive click next and finish the process.

Forced it to archive a few emails, read the help pages, imported
them back. But I'm still very confident that there are no
archive.pst files on the system anywhere, hidden files or not,
that it is putting them into.

So, I'll ask the same question again, how can I find out why
Outlook is deleting mail after 7 days and how can I make it stop?

There is something I just stumbled on, there are "Retention Policies"
and these apparently over-ride auto archiving in some cases and there
is some sort of bug in Outlook 2002 that doesn't use the Retention
policy if you set it, this should all be clear by now. The title of
the Tech article at Microsoft it "OL2002: E-Mail Retention Policies
Do Not Work After You Apply Them", somehow the help doesn't give me
the url for that. But the description seems to indicate that Outlook
then doesn't delete mail you told it to, rather than it deleting mail
you didn't tell it to.

Apparently I don't have a retention policy set, none of the mentioned
registry keys show up in RegEdit.

So, is there a way to get it to stop deleting mail after 7 days in
Outlook 2002?

Thank you

 

[SteveL]

My bad, damm I do not know what I read, Have you tried
this?
Open outlook, click view then folder view if it is not,
right click the "inbox" then properties, under the
autarchive tab see if the atuoarchive is set in there, or
the folder that you are having issues with, if you notice
the last thing it says; "permanebtly delete old items" is
there a bullet in this option?

This would explain the no archiving.

Sorry for the first responce.

 

[Don Taylor]

My bad, damm I do not know what I read, Have you tried this?
Open outlook, click view then folder view if it is not,
right click the "inbox" then properties, under the
autarchive tab see if the atuoarchive is set in there, or
the folder that you are having issues with, if you notice
the last thing it says; "permanebtly delete old items" is
there a bullet in this option?

Autoarchive is turned off in every folder. I carefully
checked every one. And even if I look at the greyed-out
values it says 14 days, if I turn it on and look at the
default values for autoarchive it is 14 days. Nothing
to do with autoarchive says anything about 7 days, and
autoarchive is turned off everywhere (and even in the
greyed out sections, "permanently delete old items" is
not selected.

This would explain the no archiving.

I'll say it again, this doesn't seem to have anything
to do with autoarchive, it never gets that far, it
deletes the mail a week before any autoarchiving would
kick into effect. That's what I want to find a way to
stop, to find out what is deleting the mail after 7 days,
7 days before archiving would happen IF it were turned on.

So, is "Retention Policy" what is deleting this mail?
If so can that be changed to delete after 10 years?
Or is it something else that is deleting the mail?
Seems like in two years this issue would have been
seen by all sorts of people and a solution found.

Sorry for the first responce.

It is ok, I've probably had a dozen times in the past
when I spend literally days studying a problem, searching
the web, studying the manuals, checking every detail.
Then I spend an hour carefully writing a posting explaining
what the problem is and that I've done my homework and all
the things I've checked. And all that just doesn't seem to
be enough to make a point. I honestly don't know what more
I could do.

Thank you

 

[Guest]

If I where you I'd post theis under the

http://support.microsoft.com/newsgroups/?pr=newsgol

 

[GerBear]

Have you found an answer to your problem? I have a client who is havin
the same exact problem. The sent items folder is deleting items olde
than 7 days. This is a real problem, who knows the answer

 

[Don Taylor]

Have you found an answer to your problem? I have a client who is having
the same exact problem. The sent items folder is deleting items older
than 7 days. This is a real problem, who knows the answer?

I read all the manuals, I searched the help system, I searched the web,
I posted several questions on the net, NOBODY seemed to know anything
about this... and then one person hit on what was causing the problem
for my mother.

Go down into the View menu and find a checkbox next to "7 days."
Uncheck that. Apparently this is some sort of default configuration
or somehow my mother got that checked. If that is checked then
Outlook believes it is doing you a favor by hiding all email that
was received more than 7 days ago and not giving any tiny hint
that it is doing this.

When you uncheck "7 days" you may find hundreds or thousands of
old mail messages suddenly appear. But this can also interact
with the auto-archive feature, where it pulls mail older than some
specified date out of folders that have the auto-archive checked
and dump it into an archive file. This same thing can delete your
old mail, etc. If the mail isn't deleted, and there is a bug in
Outlook 2002 that has to do with auto-archiving not working the
way you configure it to, you can find that by searching the
Microsoft web pages for appropriate keywords, then there is a
way to get any files in an archive back out of it.

They create a feature that makes you think it is deleting your mail,
they hide this sufficiently well that the users cannot find it, and
then they add on enough features that the automation has bugs in it.
That has got to be a sign.

I hope this helps fix your problem, it did mine.