Missing email

This page is a self help guide and has been created to help end users find missing email or at least get an understanding of the process.

Please read, investigate and check off each of the tips below before contacting us for support as it will save a lot of time and unnecessary effort.

Check your settings

Obviously if you are able to send and receive email then you don’t need to do this.

Broaden your search

If your initial search fails, make sure that you change the search form “Current Folder‘ to ‘All Outlook items‘.

Is your Outlook data indexed?

Some PC’s have the ‘Indexing’ service enabled. Great idea until it gets messed up. When this happens, the computer needs to re index its data, including Outlook data. Usually this is a fairly quick process however, we have seen this process taking several days. If the PC is carrying out an ‘re index’, you can use it as usual. Good idea to levee the PC on till the indexing has finished.

You can check your search indexing status under Settings > Privacy & security > Searching Windows.

Check your search term

Common mistake is using a search term not actually included in the email. Check the spelling of the search term and if unsuccessful, try a different search term.

Check to see if the email is archived?

The email in question could be in an archive on someone else’s computer. When a datafile reaches its capacity, clients may create an archive and offload some email into it. If the email address is available on other computers, you should check each PC in turn.

Was the email actually sent?

Get the sender to verify whether or not they did actually send you an email. If so, then get them to send you a test email. Wait 10 minutes to give it a chance to transfer through the system before refreshing your Outlook. If you don’t receive this test email, then either they will get a delivery error or they are sending the email to the wrong person.

If the sender doesn’t get a reply error, then send the client an email and get them to reply to it (this verifies that they are sending the email to the correct email address).

Someone deleted the email

As you will have carried out a search on ‘all items’ within your Outlook and and were unsuccessful and the email was once on our system then the logical conclusion would be that it has been deleted and the deleted items folder emptied.