Outlook Calendar - diary is missing

Question

I have just lost my entire diary and calendar details prior to 01 January 2018. How has this happened and how can I retrieve it

Answer 1

Hello Googlyjason,

Thanks for you post, I understand that the issue is that the appointments on your calendar prior to 2018 are missing now. First of all, I want to confirm some related information:

1. Are you using Outlook 2016 for Windows client or Outlook Web App(OWA)?
2. Is it your own calendar or shared calendar?

Let me assume that you are using Outlook 2016 for Windows client and it is not a shared calendar. In order to find back the missing calendars, please first sign in OWA and check if you can see the missing appointments there. If yes, it means that they are not deleted. Please turn off the cache mode in the Outlook client to see if you can see the appointments now. Click File->Account Settings->Account Settings, choose your Office 365 account and click Change. Under Offline Settings, uncheck Use Cached Exchange Mode. Save the settings and restart Outlook.

If you cannot see the appointments in OWA too, there might be several reasons:

1. They are deleted by mistake. Please go to Deleted Items folder and Recover Deleted Items folder and double check if you can find them there.
2. The appointments prior to 2018 are deleted due to the retention policy. It is suggested to contact the Office 365 admins in your organization to check if they have set the retention policy to delete them.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any update on this problem.

Regards,

Rick

Answer 2

Hello Googlyjason,

Thanks for you post, I understand that the issue is that the appointments on your calendar prior to 2018 are missing now. First of all, I want to confirm some related information:

1. Are you using Outlook 2016 for Windows client or Outlook Web App(OWA)?
2. Is it your own calendar or shared calendar?

Let me assume that you are using Outlook 2016 for Windows client and it is not a shared calendar. In order to find back the missing calendars, please first sign in OWA and check if you can see the missing appointments there. If yes, it means that they are not deleted. Please turn off the cache mode in the Outlook client to see if you can see the appointments now. Click File->Account Settings->Account Settings, choose your Office 365 account and click Change. Under Offline Settings, uncheck Use Cached Exchange Mode. Save the settings and restart Outlook.

If you cannot see the appointments in OWA too, there might be several reasons:

1. They are deleted by mistake. Please go to Deleted Items folder and Recover Deleted Items folder and double check if you can find them there.
2. The appointments prior to 2018 are deleted due to the retention policy. It is suggested to contact the Office 365 admins in your organization to check if they have set the retention policy to delete them.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any update on this problem.

Regards,

Rick

Thank you Rick for your speedy reply.

To answer your questions, I can confirm that I am using Outlook 2016 for Windows and that my calendar is not shared. However, I do have two work related accounts for email only and I know that old emails are purged or archived by them but I never thought that the administrator at those sites will have access to my personal business calendar.

I have checked OWA and cannot find any of the calendar items there. I am the Administrator for my Outlook and have not tinkered with this. Only last week I was able to check my old diary items going back to previous years.

The only change that I can think of that may be relevant is that I found my old android mobile phone yesterday which had been switched off for two years and I was trying to update it but could not because there wasn't enough memory. I wonder if accidently it deleted entries. 

I am absolutely guttered because all my work schedules are in my calendar and I need to access them for invoicing purposes. Any other suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

Answer 3

Hello Googlyjason,

Thanks for the prompt reply. Have you checked the Recover Deleted Items folder? If you can find them there, you can choose and recover the items.

If you cannot find them there, those items may be purged accidently. In order to find back the calendar items, please use the Global Admin account and run eDiscovery to help recover the purged items.

1. First you need to give yourself the Discovery Management permission in the Exchange admin center.
2. Then search the user mailbox for the deleted items.
3. Then export the results to a PST file and import it to the Outlook client.

For the detailed instructions, please see the following article for reference: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/enterprise/recover-deleted-items-in-a-mailbox?redirectSourcePath=%252fen-us%252farticle%252frecover-deleted-items-in-a-user-s-mailbox-admin-help-eb15194b-63ec-41b0-8d90-1823d3f558e4

Regards,

Rick

Answer 4

Thanks Rick for your instructions. I am currently away so not have time to deal with it. I shall do that on Tuesday when I get back and let you know.

Alain

Answer 5

Hello Googlyjason,

Please feel free to post back at your convenience.

Regards,

Rick