Can I retrieve my old messages on MS Outlook 2016

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ANglEAUT

altered-ego
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#3463703 22-Feb-2026 21:42

Devonboy:

... Is there anything more I can do to find all the lost emails?

Yes. Take it to somebody with experience & that you trust instead of trying things yourself.

Devonboy:

... and I am still hoping that the emails are still held somewhere in the cloud. After all, thousands of emails have been recovered from a certain disgraced financier and his 'friends'.

Is your email centrally managed? If not, then emails are not backed up & archived for 7+ years for compliance reasons by corporate IT.

How do you download your emails? IMAP or POP3?

IMAP: Look in the web version of your mailbox
POP3: With the utmost haste, contact your trusted & experienced IT Support person. They might still be available for recovery / re-download on the POP3 mail server.

Please keep this GZ community vibrant by contributing in a constructive & respectful manner.

Devonboy

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#3463709 22-Feb-2026 22:41

Thanks for the last input, although I'm not sure telling me to go to someone I trust is the best approach.

My Outlook uses IMAP, and yes I have checked on webmail and the saved folders are all empty, except for the emails from last year and a few starred ones from earlier times, highlighted as not to be deleted. This mirrors my folders on the desktop. With IMAP all email folders are saved on the Cloud, whereas with POP3 I needed to back up the *.pst files on the desktop to keep the history safe.

I know I have lost these old emails from my folders as I have searched my desktop for the relevant files and they are not there. Helpful suggestions from others have also proved to show the emails are missing.

What I'm not getting is a statement to say they will have been deleted from the Cloud and therefore not available at all, or whether there is some way of retrieving them from a server elsewhere that still holds them, and how I can retrieve them from there.

Goosey

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#3463711 23-Feb-2026 06:40

In the past, you were trying to disable OneDrive.

anychance that’s where the pst’s were saved ?

Devonboy

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#3465199 26-Feb-2026 15:15

Nice idea but no luck either. I logged back in to Onedrive but there are no deleted messages anywhere there.

I've come to the conclusion that I have lost the lot, but thanks to all who have tried to help.

sampler

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#3465210 26-Feb-2026 15:40

Not sure if anyone has suggested. If your using imap its possible you might have some "OST" files rather than "PST"
if you completed the same search as was done for PST as outlined above, that might find some other files lurking around.
(the archive file is normally local and PST based, but cant hurt to check)

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