User left the company and PST file has nearly 2000 Sync Issues

Question

We had a user leave our client's tenant around late August/early September (i.e. 30+ days ago) and the customer is now asking for that user's emails. We exported the emails using the eDiscovery app but were unable to import them. Luckily we had a .pst export of their Outlook box as well, but only a handful of emails successfully import (e.g. < 20).

1850+ emails appear in the "Sync Issues" folder, as far back as Sept. 6th 2022 at 10:30 p.m. UTC. Error messages include [80040107-501-0-660], [80040107-501-0-1900], and [80040115-514-80040115-0].

I assume that the user's information is no longer recoverable from the Exchange Admin Center, so my greatest question is if these errors are generated from Outlook unable to sync with Exchange during PST export (i.e. after they left the company), or if the user's local Outlook client was failing to properly transmit/sync Exchange data from the local computer (i.e. since September 2022).

Answer 1

Hello @Joseph Braun ,

so my greatest question is if these errors are generated from Outlook unable to sync with Exchange during PST export (i.e. after they left the company), or if the user's local Outlook client was failing to properly transmit/sync Exchange data from the local computer (i.e. since September 2022).

The PST export process usually does not involve local data synchronization between Outlook client and Exchange server, so it doesn’t seem to be generated during PST export. Then I did a test in my lab environment and noticed that the sync issues folder is not exported along with the other mailbox data during the PST export procedure, so it may not be caused by your second assumption either. Taken in the round, I am thinking it could be related to the PST import process.

Given the above situation, it is recommended that you open the .pst file directly in Outlook and check whether the number of emails is normal. In addition, it is recommended that you back up the original PST file first, and then try to import it again to check whether the "Sync Issues" folder and these errors still appear.

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Answer 2

If you have a .PST export, you have an entire backup. Make a copy of the .PST file and give it to the customer. The customer can then use Outlook - File > Open and Export > Open Outlook Data File - to open the file and do whatever with the contents; drag and drop works just fine here The import/export process often gets in the way.