If you’ve lost a folder in Outlook that you are sure was there before – don’t panic! Quite possibly it is still there, however is corrupt. This happened to me recently when I folder I knew to exist was no longer visible – but I could still do a search for items that existed in it.
Thanks to Glen Cai in the Microsoft BPOS support team, the fix was as such:
1. Download MFCMAPI from http://mfcmapi.codeplex.com/releases/view/59490
2. Extract the downloaded files and double click MFCMAPI.exe, click OK
3. Click Session->Logon and Display Store Table, select the your Outlook profile, click OK
4. Double-click your mailbox username
5. In the new window, expand to Root->IPM_SUBTREE
6. Check whether you can find the missing folder (eg. “MissingFolder”)
7. If you can find it, double-click to open the folder
8. Back in Outlook, create a new destination folder (eg. “MissingFolder2”)
9. Get back to MFCMAPI, select all the messages, right click, then Copy Message
10. Get back to Root->IPM_SUBTREE->Inbox, double click the new folder “MissingFolder2” to open it
11. Right click , click Paste messages
12. Click OK
13. Go back to Outlook to ensure that the new folder “MissingFolder2” contains the messages
14. After confirming the messages are there, then you can delete the “MissingFolder” folder in MFCMAPI and recreate it in Outlook
Happy hunting!
Discover more from Loryan Strant, Microsoft 365 MVP
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That all looks great is there such a thing for recovering folders in Outlook 2011 for Mac?
I cant believe there has not been a single reply in 3 years.
Is there anything similar for MAC?
Hi Ed, I’m not a Mac person (as was demonstrated in May 2013) so can’t help you there. I’d suggest looking at the Microsoft support site or forums.
This issue is not present with Outlook for Windows, and a single search will look in both your primary and archive mailboxes.
This blog post is over 10 years old, things have improved since then. 🙂