How to recover lost outlook files

Trying to help a neighbor who had a Vonage tech delete some old files to free up space, without asking. All the date in MS Outlook was gone. I don't know how much other 'cleaning' was performed.

I've managed to use System Mechanic to recover the Outlook email files, but didn't recover the other files ... Contacts and Calendar.


Apart from taking out a murder license....what other option would you recommend? There's need to 'clean' junk files and the registry, but won't touch any of that until we know for sure the other parts of Outlook are gone forever.

And NO there is no backup.

 

G'Day pilotgal8,

Nothing is ever lost in reality, if it was deleted then a recovery Utility like EasyRecovery Professional will do the trick for you.

You will need a spare hard drive to recover the files to. External USB is OK for the exercise.

Install EasyRecovery on the existing OS drive reboot and then run ER.

There is also a CD version of this Tool, but you still need a 2nd HDD to recover the files to before you can copy them back to the original drive.

pcbugfixer

 

Thanks pcbugfixer. Can I use a drive on the server for recovering the file or a large thumb drive...or does it HAVE TO be hard drive on the subject machine.

Arie. Thanks for the Outlook extension. I searced for any file with that extension with SystemMechanic 'deep scan' and it came up emty handed.

New report is that not all of the email was recovered.

I'll post back the results.

 

G'Day pilotgal8,

As long as the drive (whatever) is attached to the system from which you are attempting the recovery. Large thumb drive ( I presume you mean USB stick) should be recognized by ER.

I have always used a HDD as my recovery from attempted formats (destruction of evidence attempts) is normally very large and at time the whole HDD. The USB (Thumb Drive) is needed as the ER does not (cannot) recover files to the HDD you are recovering the files from and needs the 2nd (other Drive) to recover the found files and folders to.

In this instant you are attempting to recover (or search for) an email folder.

Once ER is loaded from either the HDD or CD (will start in windows) you would use the "Data Recovery" option and then in this order for search of the deleted folder or files 1. "DeletedRecovery" if it fails to detect the folder or files you are looking for, then 2. "RawRecovery" then 3. "AdvancedRecovery "

BTW. the "EmailRecovery" in the ER menu is not used for finding deleted files or folders in the email programs and is used to repair the .pst and other email files only that exist on the PC.

Other point to note is the fact that any other errors on the PC from which you are attempting the recovery from, must be in good working order (no hardware faults, like memory, HDD cluster or other faults etc.) otherwise you will get error messages, although ER will work in most instances in spite of these faults, and in fact repair most errors while you are attempting the recovery operation.

The other selection should be self explanatory as you go through them, don't worry, in that the recovery attempts do not delete any data or files or folders whilst you attempt various recovery methods.

I would suggest that rather than looking for specific files or folders, you leave the search options at *.* (all files and Folder) and then obviously look for any "C:\Documents and Settings" related folders under which you would find the "User Name" and subsequent folder and file structure for the folder and files you are looking for.

Trust this helps in you recovery.

The version of ER I use is on my HDD and I have the CD version - both are at v6.12

pcbugfixer

 

Thanks for the response, but I opted for the easy and FREE route.
I copied the entire *.pst file to the server hardfile, then went back to a system restore point before the IDIOT arrived.

Now my only quandry is restoring the emails form the server copy of OUTLOOK to the active copy of Outlook on the client machine.

Any help on how to do this in Outlook would be appreciated, as I am no Outlook pro.

 

Thanks Arie, I'll try that later today and post the results so you can close this thread.