FAQ-Wiki

Q:When recovering deleted objects from a PST file using Outlook Recovery Kit, some emails end up lacking some of their content. That is, emails have From, To, and Subject fields, but no email body and/or attachments

A:

Every object saved by Outlook to a file is stored in several blocks of up to 512 bytes. When a message is deleted, these blocks are not deleted and remain in the file. However, when new emails are sent or received, these blocks may be overwritten. As a result, the deleted email can be recovered only partially, for example:

  • if there is a subject, the message body or attachments may be lost;
  • if the subject is lost but the body is there, the email will be restored without From and To fields;
  • if the message subject and body have been overwritten, the attachment will be saved as a standalone file;
  • and so forth.

Outlook Recovery Kit does everything possible to recover deleted data. If an object's data blocks are overwritten by Outlook, the object will be recovered only partially.