Missing Draft email

Question

I created an email two days ago and saved it in my draft folder. I went to open it this morning and the body of the email is blank. The email and subject line are still there, but the body is missing. How do i recover this?

Answer 1

Dear Doug,

Good day, and thank you for reaching out to the Q&A Forum. As a forum moderator, I genuinely wish I could directly inspect your mailbox and recover the draft for you. Unfortunately, my role here is limited to providing general guidance and steps you can try from your side. I tried to replicate the issue in my own test environment, and my drafts appeared normally, so this does not seem to be a widespread behavior.

Before you do anything else: since the draft item and subject line still exist but the body is blank, please avoid editing or saving that item again for now. Doing so could overwrite a version that may still be recoverable from the server or a local cache.

1.Check Outlook on the web

Sign in to Outlook on the web and open your Drafts folder there.

• If the body appears online, copy the content into a new message immediately. This would indicate the problem is with your local Outlook cache or display, rather than the message itself.
• If it is blank there as well, the blank version may have already synchronized to Exchange Online.

Please also check Outlook on any phone or other computer that may still hold an older copy. If one of those devices has not synchronized recently, it is worth disconnecting it from the network before opening Outlook, then copying the draft text somewhere safe first.

2.Look for another copy

Sometimes a synchronization conflict leaves a second copy elsewhere in the mailbox. In both Classic Outlook and Outlook on the web:

1. Search using the exact subject line and any distinctive recipient names.
2. Set the search scope to All Mailboxes or All Outlook Items.
3. Check the following folders: Drafts, Deleted Items, Sent Items, Archive, Conversation History
4. Sort your Drafts folder by Modified date and look for duplicate or older copies.
5. If the message was a reply, open the original conversation and check whether another draft copy is attached to that thread.

3.Contact support

If the draft body is blank in both desktop Outlook and Outlook on the web, and no other copy can be found, I would recommend that the Global Admin in your organization open a service request with Microsoft Support. A support engineer can review the mailbox's item history, check whether an earlier version of the draft is recoverable server-side, and escalate to a specialized team if deeper investigation is needed.For detailed instructions on how to get support, please refer to Get support - Microsoft 365 admin. If you don't know who your IT administrator is, please refer to this article: How do I find my Microsoft 365 admin? - Microsoft Support 

For additional assistance, use this link to find the appropriate contact number from your region: Global Customer Service phone numbers - Microsoft Support 

I hope this information is helpful. Please follow these steps and let me know how it goes. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please feel free to share them in the comments so I can continue to support you. Thank you for your patience and understanding. I'm looking forward to your reply. 

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