Various Ways to Recover Deleted Emails

Oops! We’ve all done this. We’ve all hit the delete button way too soon when deleting that 100^th email from your Inbox. Suddenly, you realize that your boss’ request to put the finishing touches on that huge project that you’ve been working on was the 99^th email. But don’t panic. There are ways to recover emails that have been deleted, even permanently. And no, it does not involve your boss resending that very important email again.

Step 1: Check Your Deleted Items Folder

Every Outlook client mailbox comes with a deleted items folder. So any mail items deleted (email, calendar events, appointments, etc.) will always be forwarded to this deleted items folder. This is known as a soft delete.

To recover recently deleted items within the Outlook mailbox, select the Deleted Items folder. Once you are within your deleted items, you can sort by date, sender or type of message to find the mail item that you’re looking for.

But let’s say that you deleted your deleted items. Now what?

Step 2: Recover Deleted Items

MS Outlook client has a Recover Deleted Items Tool that allows you to recover mail items that have been deleted from the deleted items folder. To recover deleted items on the client:

a.       Select the Deleted Items folder,

b.      On the　Tools　menu, click　Recover Deleted Items (this will be under the Folder tab in Outlook 2010)

c.       Highlight the deleted items you wish to recover

d.      Select the Recover Selected Items icon. Your selected items will now be restored to the Deleted Items folder.

Wonderful news, right? But what if you permanently deleted your deleted items? This means that at some point, you held down the shift key while selecting delete, or what’s known as a hard delete. Now your deleted mail items are no longer recoverable from the deleted items folder or by using the Recover Deleted items tool.

Step 3: Recover Deleted Items via Exchange

Most businesses have an MS Exchange environment where email items are retained for at least two weeks before being physically deleted from the Information Store. This is referred to as the Deleted Items Retention Policy. However, these deleted items are hidden from the MS Outlook client and must be recovered by an administrator with Exchange Admin rights. An Exchange Administrator gathers information needed to perform a Single Item Recovery. The Exchange Administrator then searches the "Dumpster" of the mail server. This is where purged or deleted items are located before being physically deleted from the Information Store via the Deleted Items Retention Policy. Once the deleted item is found, a .PST file can be created containing the missing mail items. The .pst file is then imported into the user’s mailbox, thus restoring the missing email.

Step 4: Exchange Backups

Last but not least, is the option to restore a user’s email using a Point-in-Time recovery Exchange Restore. Stick around for my next blog as we go through the task of a mailbox restore using a third party backup, restore and archive recovery tool.

Jeronna Freeman  is the Cloud Administrator for JHC Technology.  She can be reached at jfreeman(at)jhctechnology.com or connect with her on LinkedIn.