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Recover messages deleted from .pst files

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› Outlook › Configure and Maintain › Recover messages deleted from .pst files

Last reviewed on February 13, 2018     22 Comments

May 13, 2009 by Diane Poremsky 22 Comments

Exchange server users may be able to recover deleted items using Deleted Items recovery, if the administrator has it enabled. If it's not enabled, they cannot recover items deleted from Exchange mailboxes. See Recovering Deleted Items in Outlook for details.

The following method is a last ditch effort to recover Outlook items permanently deleted from a pst file. It works only on PSTs but there is no guarantee it will work.

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The best way to avoid accidentally deleting items is to turn off the option to empty the deleted items folder on exit and set up AutoArchive to delete older items from the deleted folder every few days.

Things to remember:

  1. This works under very limited circumstances
  2. If the PST has begun compacting, it will likely fail
  3. You're better off NOT emptying the deleted folder until you are sure you won't need the messages
  4. Don't store messages in the folder unless you are sure the messages are trash

If, for some reason, you move items to the deleted folder and change your mind after emptying the Deleted Items folder, you may be able to recover the messages under very specific conditions.

When the method below fails, you may be able to recover the deleted message using a commercial product, such as Stellar Phoenix Deleted Email Recovery, Advanced Outlook Repair or Kernel Outlook PST

How Outlook's Deleted Items folder works

A PST is a database. Items are records within the database and there is an index that points to each item. When you empty the Deleted Items folder, Outlook doesn't actually delete the items, it just deletes the items' listings from the index. The item is still in the PST, but unrecoverable because Outlook has no idea where it is without the pointer in the index. The space the item takes up is called "whitespace".

When you Compact a PST, the item is finally removed permanently and the whitespace is recovered, often shrinking the PST by many megabytes. Once the PST has 20% "whitespace", Outlook begins compacting the PST. If the Deleted Items folder contained a lot of messages, Outlook may begin compacting the PST immediately and the items will be deleted forever within a few minutes.

To recover the items which are no longer in the index you need to force Outlook to rebuild the index by causing corruption. You can cause corruption by using a Hex editor to delete some characters from the beginning of the PST file. If you delete the wrong ones you'll cause corruption but not in the index and Outlook won't rebuild the index.

Recover the Deleted Items

If you don't know what a Hex editor is, you probably shouldn't be hex editing anything, but if you want to try, Google for "hex editor" - UltraEdit is probably the best and easiest one to use. Before doing anything to the PST with a Hex Editor, make a copy of the PST, or you may end up losing all of your e-mail.

  1. Open the PST in the Hex editor.
  2. Delete positions 7 through 13 with the spacebar. Since you're using hexadecimal numbering, this actually clears 13 characters in the following positions:
    00007, 00008, 00009, 0000a, 0000b, 0000c, 0000d
    0000e, 0000f, 00010, 00011, 00012, 00013
    As you clear the characters, the editor displays the code “20” in their position.
  3. hex edit the pst file

  4. Save the PST, it is now corrupted.
  5. Run the Inbox Repair Tool, SCANPST.exe, to recover the file. Use Windows Search utility to find it. For additional information on the Inbox Repair Tool, see How to use Scanpst.exe to repair Outlook data files or KB 287497
  6. The Inbox Repair Tool creates a backup and repairs the damage and recreates the PST.

Open the new PST in Outlook. The Deleted Items folder should now contain the deleted messages, unless Outlook has already deleted them for good by compacting the PST.

Discuss in our community
Recover messages deleted from .pst files was last modified: February 13th, 2018 by Diane Poremsky

Related Posts:

  • Recover Deleted Items in OWA
  • Are Deleted Items gone forever in Outlook?
  • Using Scanpst in Outlook Click to Run
  • Empty Multiple Deleted Items Folders using a Macro

About Diane Poremsky

A Microsoft Outlook Most Valuable Professional (MVP) since 1999, Diane is the author of several books, including Outlook 2013 Absolute Beginners Book. She also created video training CDs and online training classes for Microsoft Outlook. You can find her helping people online in Outlook Forums as well as in the Microsoft Answers and TechNet forums.

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Jesse
Jesse

Hi Diane,
Is there a way to recover Office 2007 Outlook templates that are no longer showing up after installing Office365 with Outlook 2016?

Vote Up00Vote Down Reply
July 18, 2018 3:33 pm
Chan Pat
Chan Pat

Good afternoon. MS Outlook 2010
User create archive mail replace same old folder & old location.
Can you have trip for recover it, please?

Vote Up00Vote Down Reply
February 15, 2017 3:37 am
Diane Poremsky
Diane Poremsky

They deleted then recreated the folder they used for the Archive button? Do they empty the Deleted items folder? If you use Exchange server and it's gone from Deleted items, you might be able ot get the mail back from Recover Deleted. It won't list the folder there tho.

Vote Up0-1Vote Down Reply
February 16, 2017 12:37 am
Tomasz Stradomski
Tomasz Stradomski

Thank you very much, it works! :-)

Vote Up00Vote Down Reply
December 6, 2016 8:00 am
CharlieK
CharlieK

This method works also with Outlook 2016 .pst file.

Vote Up00Vote Down Reply
October 15, 2016 5:19 am
Mark
Mark

Thanks for that tip Diane, saved my bacon today.

Vote Up0-1Vote Down Reply
January 11, 2016 11:05 am
JBParkland
JBParkland

Hi Diane, thank you very much for this great fix. All my partner's POP3 sent email disappeared from her sent items folder in Outlook 2010 for no obvious reason, but running the hex editor/scanpst fix on the pst file recovered them all. So many many thanks.

Vote Up00Vote Down Reply
September 1, 2015 2:57 pm
Amod Kunte
Amod Kunte

I have configured my gmail account in outlook 2007 (IMAP). accidently i have deleted some mails from gmail account. now they are gone from my outlook as well. is there any option i can get all the mails back?????

Vote Up00Vote Down Reply
July 23, 2015 3:37 am
Diane Poremsky
Diane Poremsky

If they are not in gmail.com, then they are gone forever. The changes would have synced to Outlook on the next sync, removing them from Outlook too.

Vote Up00Vote Down Reply
July 23, 2015 8:26 am
Nelson
Nelson

I've managed to recover the emails.
I was trying to copy/move the emails of the "damaged" OST to a PST and the result was error. Later i was already giving up and created a new imap account on outlook and tried once more move the emails and succeeded, i'd to copy the emails one by one, and every time it gave me an error, but the email copied successfully. Move the emails from ost to pst resulted in error and no email copied, from ost to ost resulted in error but email copied correctly.

Thank you very much for your help!!!

Vote Up00Vote Down Reply
April 29, 2015 4:28 am

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