URGENT HELP NEEDED! Need to restore email account

[Ian]

A friend of mine has just deleted her primary email account (listed as
Microsoft Exchange Server) from her Outlook 2003 (she's running Win
2000) as she has just got a new internet provider but on doing that all
her inbox, address book etc has disappeared.

She desperately needs to recover it as soon as possible .. can it be
done and if so how? Would really appreciate any help as she has urgent
messages which need to be sent

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

The mail and contacts would still be on the Exchange Server. She can use the Tools | E-mail Accounts command to add the Exchange account back to Outlook.

 

[Vince Averello [MVP-Outlook]]

Was the account on a local Exchange Server (a company) or something else?
Most likely her Inbox was stored on the server hence the reason why it 'went
away' when she removed the account

 

[Ian]

Was the account on a local Exchange Server (a company) or something else?
Most likely her Inbox was stored on the server hence the reason why it 'went
away' when she removed the account

Well the account was the one that she used with her company which she
has now left. However, her mail must have been stored locally on her
laptop as she could read/see it whether she was connected to work or
not, until she deleted the email account from within Outlook.

 

[Ian]

The mail and contacts would still be on the Exchange Server. She can use the Tools | E-mail Accounts command to add the Exchange account back to Outlook.

Hi Sue,

Thanks for your message. Do you know what parameters she would need to
know in order to "add" the account back again? The reason I ask is
because she's not the most technical of people so just need to make sure
that she will actually know the info.

Regards,

Ian

 

[Vince Averello [MVP-Outlook]]

Which means that she had an offline folder which is now abandoned and most
likely inaccessable (security feature)

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Unless she wants to pay $$$ for a tool to get it back.

The only other possibility is if she has a backup of the Windows registry and wants to restore it. The registry contains the Outlook mail profile settings. Thus, restoring the registry to an earlier state would restore the Outlook mail profile, too. However, it would roll back any changes that might have been made since then.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[Ian]

Which means that she had an offline folder which is now abandoned and most
likely inaccessable (security feature)

Is there really no way of recovering it ? Because it must be very easy
for an inexperienced user to delete an email account from inside Outlook
in error and then to lose all those years of email messages and the
address book etc ?

 

[Ian]

Unless she wants to pay $$$ for a tool to get it back.

The only other possibility is if she has a backup of the Windows registry and wants to restore it. The registry contains the Outlook mail profile settings. Thus, restoring the registry to an earlier state would restore the Outlook mail profile, too. However, it would roll back any changes that might have been made since then.

She won't even know what the Windows registry is let alone have a backup
of it Would a System Restore do the same thing (I'm assuming
Win2000 has that facility, I'm only familiar with XP).

Do you happen to know the name of any of the tools that might be able to
restore the account ?

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

She won't even know what the Windows registry is let alone have a backup

of it Would a System Restore do the same thing (I'm assuming
Win2000 has that facility, I'm only familiar with XP).

Windows 2000 doesn't have the same restore capabilities as Windows XP. If there's no backup, there's no restore.

Do you happen to know the name of any of the tools that might be able to
restore the account ?

I don't keep track of tools that hack data file security. I just know they're in the $300+ range. A Google search for "ost pst" should turn something up.

Is there really no way of recovering it ? Because it must be very easy
for an inexperienced user to delete an email account from inside Outlook
in error and then to lose all those years of email messages and the
address book etc ?

There really is no way other than a tool to hack the security. Deleting a mail account, even an Exchange account, doesn't delete the data. The data still exists, but is not available to her for security reasons, because she no longer has access to the Exchange server. (The company she worked for might even argue that the data belonged to them and that she had no right to take it with her.) What she should have done is exported the data from the Exchange account to a Personal Folders .pst file.
--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

Yes, System restore will work. She needs to go back to a point before she
removed it.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
Author, Teach Yourself Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours
Coauthor, OneNote 2003 for Windows (Visual QuickStart Guide)
Author, Google and Other Search Engines (Visual QuickStart Guide)



Join OneNote Tips mailing list: http://www.onenote-tips.net/

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

Not without spending about $500.... for security reasons, an offline folder
can only be opened by the exchange account and an exchange account can only
be created if they user has access to the exchange server for
authentication.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
Author, Teach Yourself Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours
Coauthor, OneNote 2003 for Windows (Visual QuickStart Guide)
Author, Google and Other Search Engines (Visual QuickStart Guide)



Join OneNote Tips mailing list: http://www.onenote-tips.net/