Hi, Can anybody please help solve this problem: After a user logged on to another workstation and set up his email-account, everything looks fine except for his inbox which is empty. When trying to log on to his regular workstation, all email in the inbox is also gone. How has that happened and how to retrieve it again? We are running small business server 2003. Thanks,

Is the second workstation running in cached mode?

I have no idea - how do I find out? But the problem is on both workstations - it seems all mail in the inbox has vanished, but i.e. sent items appear just fine.

What do you see in Outlook Web Access?

Well, we don't use OWA, so I don't know what it would show.

Send receive doesn't populate anything?

nope - it says all folders are up to date. Is there a easy way to restore a users emails in exchange? Is there some kind of auto-backup feature on the server or something?

You may have to do a normal restore if the information was backed up properly.You can check to see if somehow the information was deleted by checking "recover deleted items". You probably want to do that on a machine that has the dumpster on:[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Exchange\Client\Options]"DumpsterAlwaysOn"=dword:00000001I have this enabled on my machine to help with recover items that people "shift+delete".

Sounds like they downloaded the mail to a PST file.Neil Hobson, Exchange MVP

Hi Rolf, What's your mail client? Is it Outlook? How your mail client connects to Exchange, via pop3/impa4? I agree with Neil, it looks like one of your client had downloaded the mail to a local pst file. Thanks, Elvis

if the user set the rule to deliver it to PST then you need to copy the PST and map that PST to current new profile. and in case if you want to recover deleted items from all folders you can follow below steps. note that you can only recover emails the retention period set on database How can I recover items that I have "hard deleted" in Outlook?Vinod |CCNA|MCSE 2003 +Messaging|MCTS|ITIL V3|

Hi Rolf,Any update on the thread?

Hi all, Thanks for you help, but I have had no luck in recovering the emails. I've also tried looking for pst-files and it doesn't seem like the emails we're downloaded locally: All sent items and manually archived items shows up when connecting to the exchange server - only the inbox is "lost". I'm sure the emails we're not deleted or hard-deleted - to me it looks more like a sync error or something. I've located the .ost file but it also shows no items in the inbox. I don't know so much about how exchange works, but is there something like an auto-backup feature built in? Is there any way to recover/restore a users mailbox? thanks,

Have you verified that the Inbox really is empty (i.e. checked the size of the Inbox)? Could it be the Views that are playing tricks? Pretty much a stab in the dark but it *could* be that Views are are set to only show unread messages instead of all messages. That setting would follow the user around no matter which workstation being used.

the inbox is really empty - it's not the view-setting playing tricks, unfortunately. Good tip, though, hadn't really thought of that.

On Tue, 6-Oct-09 11:01:17 GMT, rolf_karstensen wrote:>Hi all,>>Thanks for you help, but I have had no luck in recovering the emails. I've also tried looking for pst-files and it doesn't seem like the emails we're downloaded locally: All sent items and manually archived items shows up when connecting to the exchange server - only the inbox is "lost". That's typical of a POP3 client's behavior.>I'm sure the emails we're not deleted or hard-deleted"Tools |Recover deleted items..." menu.> - to me it looks more like a sync error or something. That would have left the messages in the mailbox.>I've located the .ost file but it also shows no items in the inbox.>>I don't know so much about how exchange works, but is there something like an auto-backup feature built in? Is there any way to recover/restore a users mailbox?Sure. Restore the backup you have of the mailbox database to therecovery storage group.---Rich MatheisenMCSE+I, Exchange MVP--- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP

thanks, Could you please explain me in detail how to restore the backup. As mentioned, I don't know my way around exchange very well...