Undelete items in Outlook

Way back in December 1997, Microsoft launched a product called Exchange Server 5.5. It was a landmark moment for Microsoft and Exchange Server has grown from this point in time to become the world's favourite messaging server. But there's one small technology that we first introduced way back in Exchange Server 5.5 that many people have since forgotten about: Recovering Deleted Items.

If your Outlook client connects to an Exchange Server, chance are that you can recover items you have deleted, even after emptying your Deleted Items folder.

Don't believe me? Well try this. Click on your Deleted Items folder (if there's anything in there, right-click and select Empty "Deleted Items" Folder) then go to the Tools menu and select Recover Deleted Items... Outlook will send a request to the Exchange Server and shortly respond with a window showing all deleted items in the cache that can be safely recovered. Select the ones you wish to rescue, wallop the Recover icon and, hey presto, they magically come back to life! Nice!

Note: this doesn't work for all historically deleted items. The distance that you can step back in time is controlled by your Exchange Administrator who ultimately determines how long items will be held in the information store. You may only be able to step back a few hours, days or weeks. If in doubt or in need of retrieving something older than Outlook allows you to recover, contact your IT Helpdesk for advice. Oh, and this doesn't work for .pst files either. But you already backed those up to external storage, right?!

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• Anonymous
  December 17, 2005
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