Best Ways to Recover Permanently Deleted Emails from OST File
“Help! I accidentally deleted a few emails from Outlook offline folder that I need. I would like to know how to recover deleted emails from the OST file? Is there any manual method available that can help me to restore deleted messages? Or any automated tool that can recover permanently lost emails?“
This is a common situation when users use Outlook with Exchange Server and delete some of the data files. As we know, Outlook saves all the items such as contacts, and emails in a mailbox located on the server. The file saved on the hard drive is an Offline Data File (OST) and stores a copy of the account mailbox. It helps the users with quick data access in the offline environment, and it is always synchronized with the mail server.
At times, the users accidentally delete precious emails from the Outlook OST file, that can be easily restored from the ‘Deleted Items’ folder. But what happens when the emails are deleted permanently and are not available in the Deleted Items folder? or, do users accidentally clean the folder?
In such situations, it becomes a tedious task to recover emails from the OST file. Therefore, in this blog, we are going to discuss the methods that can recover deleted emails from OST files easily.
Use SysTools OST Recovery Software to Recover Permanently Deleted Emails from OST File in Microsoft Outlook 2019, 2016, 2013, 2010, 2007, 2003 versions.
This solution ensures complete recovery of emails and also repair corrupt OST file. Also, it allows users to save the resultant emails in multiple formats such as PST, EML, MSG, HTML, and Office 365. The software is capable of converting password secured or encrypted orphaned OST file.
Use Outlook to Recover Permanently Deleted Emails from OST File
This mentioned method is applicable to Microsoft Outlook:
-
- Go to Windows Control Panel and open the Mail applet.
- Select the email account from the list of configured accounts and click on the Change tab.
- In Change Account Window, go to the More Settings option.
- Select the Advanced tab and uncheck the ‘Use Cached Exchange Mode’ option. After that click on Apply button under the Microsoft Exchange window. Click on the Outlook Data File Settings button to continue the process.
- As soon as you click the button, the Outlook Data File Settings window display on the screen. Now, select the Disable Offline Use button and click OK.
- A message pop-out ‘Outlook will not be able to work with your OST file’, click on Yes to continue. This will redirect you to the More Settings window.
- Choose the Outlook Data File Settings option again. Doing this, activate the Browse tab. Then, open an old offline data file and click on OK from the same window.
- In Change Account Window, check the checkbox corresponding to Use Cached Exchange Mode. Then, click on Next >> Finish.
- Open the Outlook program, here you will see a message that ‘Outlook is using an old copy of your OST’. Click OK to message window and wait to launch Outlook properly. This will recover lost emails from the .ost file.
Note:- Do not try to again launch Microsoft Outlook because it will open with a new OST file.
- Once Outlook opens completely, you can view your mail, contacts, and other data in the account.
After the completion of the steps, users can either make a PST file or import all the crucial data from an old OST file. Moreover, users can also archive all mail items from the offline folder to a new PST file.
Limitation to Restore Permanently Deleted Messages from OST File
The above-mentioned method is reliable in case of recovering permanently deleted emails from OST files in Outlook 2010, 2013, 2016, and 2019. But, in the case of large-sized OST files, it gets fails and sometimes leads to permanent data loss. Therefore, a most expert does not use this manual method to restore lost messages from OST file.
Bottom Line
Losing important data from any application is a nightmare. A similar case happens in Microsoft Outlook when the users accidentally deleted some of the crucial files from an OST file. Therefore, in this blog, we have provided a manual or automated way to recover deleted emails from OST files.
Considering the manual approach’s downside, it is suggested to use the automated solution. This program is devised to restore permanently deleted messages from OST files quickly and easily.