Our email are lost

Question

Several of our emails are missing from my old Outlook client. They aren't in the Trash or Archive, and a search for the Sender/Subject returns no results.

I've already tried restarting the app and checking my retention policies, but the emails are still gone. Could you provide some insight into whether this might be a local profile corruption

Answer 1

Hi @Shari Rondi

May I ask if you are using Exchange, POP or IMAP account?

If you are using Exchange account, please log in via https://outlook.cloud.microsoft/mail/ and check if you can see your message there.

If yes, your emails are still saved on the server. In this case, you can try:

• In Classic Outlook, go to File > Account settings > double click your account >set the slider to all right to download all past emails.
  

Rebuild .ost file: Close Outlook > Press Windows + R > Type in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Outlook\ > Look for your email address and delete it > Restart Outlook. This will force a resync to the server.

If you cannot see the emails in your Outlook web, please contact your admin to perform a Content search.

If you are using IMAP, please check in your webmail of your provider.

I look forward for your reply.

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Answer 2

Based on the described symptoms, local profile corruption is a plausible cause, and it is one of the standard things to rule out when Outlook search returns no results for items that should exist.

In classic Outlook, when search behaves unexpectedly (missing items, no hits for known messages), one recommended diagnostic step is to create and test with a new Outlook profile:

1. In classic Outlook, select File > Account Settings > Manage Profiles. Or close Outlook and open Mail from the Windows Control Panel.
2. In Mail Setup – Outlook, select Show Profiles, then Add on the General tab.
3. Enter a name for the new profile and select OK.
4. Complete the account setup (email address and password) and select Next, then Finish.
5. In the Mail dialog, under When starting Microsoft Outlook, use this profile, choose Prompt for a profile to be used, then OK.
6. Start Outlook, choose the new profile, and let it fully sync.
7. Use the Search box to look for the missing messages.

If search works and the missing emails appear in the new profile, that strongly indicates the old profile (or its local cache/index) was corrupted. In that case, the new profile can be made the default and data migrated as needed.

If the messages still do not appear in the new profile, the issue is unlikely to be just local profile corruption and may involve server-side deletion, archiving, or other mailbox-level changes. In that case, further investigation on the server side (e.g., by an admin) would be required.

Additionally, when search cannot find older emails in classic Outlook, ensure that:

• The Deleted Items folder is included in search if there is any chance the items were deleted:
  1. File > Options > Search.
  2. Enable Include messages from the Deleted items folder in each data file when searching in All Items.
  3. Select OK and restart Outlook.
• The sync slider is set to cache enough history locally so that indexing/search can see older mail:
  1. File > Account Settings > Account Settings.
  2. On Email tab, select the account and choose Change.
  3. Move Download email for the past to the desired range or to All.
  4. Select Next > Done, then restart Outlook.

If, after these steps, the emails still do not appear even in a fresh profile, that points away from local corruption and toward the items no longer existing in the mailbox or being stored somewhere not covered by the current search scope.

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References:

• Troubleshooting Outlook search issues