Hello,
we have an issue with Outlook 2013 (Exchange 2010 profile). An user has replied to an email (external address) assuming his email will go to sent items, and of course will be delivered to the recipient. After some time the recipient asked for a feedback. Than my user figured out that his reply was vanished. That email cannot be found any more, server logs do not show any send activity for this user. But the email he replied on, shows that "you have answered this email ..." flag + message. It was not just this one email, during the whole day the user has sent several mails, but none was really sent out and is not in his Outlook sent items, drafts, outbox, etc. We have searched over all folders for such emails, double-checked with OWA, no success.
On one hand such a behaviour is frustrating, but more critical is the fact that these emails simply disappear, it may happen that someone puts quite a lot of effort into composing such an email and than it's gone. I have to admit that the user has had a crash of Outlook early this morning. However he continued to receive emails, thought everything is fine, since sending emails apparently did not cause any issue, but finally emails just disappeared. On the other hand, after sending an email once via OWA regular send emails from within Outlook also started working again.
Any idea where these emails can be?

kind regards,
Dieter Tontsch
mobileX AG

Dieter,

I would start by repairing the local office installation.  Control Panel, Programs, Select Office, Repair.  Then reboot the computer.

What mode are they working in cached, etc.?  Are they using a PST file?

I have seen emails disappear in the past when an Outlook PST file nears the max file size, or a mailbox is near max mailbox size.  This was fixed by running an archive and reducing the PST/Mailbox size.

Thanks Curt,

users are using ost files since they run with cached mode (12 month I think). I have not checked the ost file size, but I am not aware that there might be a size limit. All I can say is tha tthe user's mailbox on the server is arround 2 GB large with 60.000 items in it.

I know that old pst files have had a size limit of 2 GB, but this is nto true anymore, right? However it is an ost file.

This users's mailbox keeps a lot of garbage, that is ture, however, it is far not the larges mailbox in our company.

I told him to archive it anyway, since this was my first thought too.

Dieter

Dieter,

You are correct that limit is much larger now, I was just not sure how large the users mailbox was.

Maximum .OST file size in Unicode is 20GB for Outlook 2007 and 50GBfor Outlook 2010/2013. By default the maximum size is set to 20GB. 

So I am guessing it is not the max file size issue.

Another setting to check:

In Outlook 2013, go to File, Options, Mail and check the Save Messages options.

Are you saving replies in the folder with the original?

If you forwarded the message, are you saving forwarded items?

Are you saving sent items?

Just another thought for you.

Hi Dieter,

Is there the same issue when sending emails via OWA?

If OWA is ok, it should be a outlook client issue.

Except the above suggestions, I also recommend you try the following methods to narrow down the issue:

1. Try to recreate outlook profile and check the result.

2. Try to change another PC and configure outlook profile.

If the issue still persist, you can try to move the problematic mailbox to another database and check if any helps.

Best regards,

Thanks for your feedback.

I will monitor the issue further. But since it only happend for a few hour till now, not several month befor and not afterwards, I will not proceed with these steps yet. But I also thought about re-creating the Outlook profile and also I am pretty sure it is a local Outlook problem and not an Exchange one.

Thanks,

Dieter

Thanks again Curt,

even though your suggestions and information is no clear statement like, this happens because .... I very welcome your information mainly regarding max. OST-file sizes etc...

And yes, we are saving sent, reply and forwarded messages correct, since this user has had no issues so far several month before with the vey same installation. And once it started working again, emails got saved at the right place again.

Thank you,

Dieter

Hello,

looks like the issue described is the same as the problem from this post here https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/exchange/en-US/67823fa1-ce57-4adf-97d1-aa8383cfb329/outbox-messages-disappear-and-are-not-stored-anywhere.

And the hint with the PST file residing on a network share seems to be the most realistic approach. At least, our user with this issue has had connected a pst file from a network share into his Outlook. BTW, the solution with creating a new Outlook profile might also solve theProblem,but not because of the new share, but because of the fact that probably the share-locatd pst file is no longer connected with that new Outlook profile.

Dieter

• Marked as answer by Dieter Tontsch, mobileX 23 hours 1 minutes ago