How to save yourself after accidentally deleting an email folder on your iPhone

In the tradition of ‘physician, heal thyself’, I’ll come clean and confess to a slight user error with my iPhone. I will also let you in on the secret of how I recovered from it, which you may also be able to do WITHOUT calling your IT department.

So, this iPhone thing is all new to me. I’m usually an early adopter, but my HTC phone was still under contract when the first iPhone came out and then I procrastinated about the iPhone vs Windows Phone debate so I managed to launch straight into a 4S.  Setting it up was rather straighforward – until I tried to add another email account.  Said second email account is on a server that isn’t mine, and all I had was a wedmail address & the login details.  I can figure this out, surely.

Well, partway through, I got confused. See, if you add a New Mailbox into an existing account, that New Mailbox has an icon that makes it look just like a folder. And if you already have an existing folder with exactly the same name, and you decide to delete the New Mailbox cause you’ve put it in the wrong place, you may accidentally delete your folder. Even when it warns you that you are deleting the contents too, you click ok, cause you think you are deleting the new, incorrect Mailbox. Ooops.

If that whole last paragraph lost you completely – ignore it.  Pretend for a moment that you’ve just managed to accidentally delete an entire folder out of your email account including it’s contents, on your iPhone.  Ooops.

Having such great connectivity meant that my iPhone had already told my actual mailbox on our Microsoft Exchange email server that yes, I really did want to delete that folder and all of it’s contents.  Gulp.  However, my saving grace was my Microsoft Outlook offline storage file (OST).  Sitting dormant on my powered-off laptop, this little gem of a file had not talked to my server yet and had no idea that I wanted to delete that folder. And all of it’s contents.  So, here’s the magic trick:

I started up my laptop with it connected to the LAN and I logged in.  (It was quicker to do this connected than to wait for the laptop to realise it had no network and had to used my local info.)   I then DISABLED my Wi-Fi connection and UNPLUGGED my LAN cable.  The I started Outlook.  Outlook was sad that it had no connection to the Exchange server, but it happily displayed the cached, offline copy of my mailfile, including my deleted folder. And all of it’s contents.  #joy!

In Outlook, I then made a COPY of this folder (and it’s contents) to another location within my mailfile and gave it a new name.  Then I plugged in my LAN cable.

Outlook greeted the Exchange server, received the request to delete the orginal folder and sent back a request to please create a new folder in a new location with this new name and a copy of all of the contents, which is just what I had done when my Outlook client was disconnected.  Ta da!!

The folder still lives and so does it’s contents.

Now, don’t roll your eyes at me if you’re a seasoned Exchange Administrator because I’ve just posted something that’s sooo 1997.  This workaround did the trick nicely, is fairly straightforward to do, and might help somebody someday.  Unless they start their Outlook client when they are connected to the network and synchronise the deletion first. That would be bad. Then they might need to call their IT department.

-SCuffy 

 

Office 2010 – great new features!

Written for the Computer Troubleshooters franchise for distribution to our global client base:

Microsoft’s release of Office 2010 has been somewhat overshadowed by the recent Apple iPad release, however the new version of Office has some fantastic improvements that are worth shouting about. This month, we highlight a few of the features that will make your life easier.

Work better together – Do you e-mail files for people to review, managing revision numbers and tracking editing changes? Or do you use technology like Google Apps for internet-based sharing and collaboration? With Office 2010, your document can now be shared easily on the internet and edited by multiple people at the same time (for real-time co-authoring). This feature alone may change how teams work together internally and how businesses work with their customers.

Office wherever you need it (and it’s free!) – Office Web Apps will offer lightweight versions of Word Excel and PowerPoint from your web browser, for free. Whilst these products are missing many features, they’re designed to complement the full products and provide great basic editing from any location.

Look before you paste – Even the humble paste feature is overhauled, with the new Paste Preview. You can now choose to keep the source formatting, merge the formatting or keep the text only of your pasted content. As you hover the mouse over these options, you’ll see a preview of what your content will look like before it’s inserted. There’s now also a built-in screen capture tool and screen clipper giving you more control over the screen images you wish to copy.

PowerPoint embraces multimedia – Microsoft has stepped up the video capability of PowerPoint with advanced video editing functions now built into the application. You can also embed YouTube videos into your slides, though you’ll need an internet connection to display them when you run your presentation. You can also distribute your slides as a video, or easily broadcast your presentation over the internet.

E-mail’s new look – Outlook inherits the wide ‘ribbon’ toolbar that other applications had in Office 2007. The new Conversation View lets you follow the threads of a discussion more easily and inside an e-mail you’ll see meetings, attachments and other emails that are related to the sender. You’ll even be able to include them as a social networking contact with the Add button. For repetitive tasks, Outlook introduces macro-like QuickSteps, enabling you to action several tasks with one click (e.g. reply to a message and delete the original).

Never lose a document again? – If you’re not happy with the latest changes to your file, the Autosave feature now keeps the last 5 versions that it saved and you can preview and compare their contents. If your computer crashes or your laptop battery dies and you suddenly remember that you haven’t saved the masterpiece you’ve been working on for the last hour, Office now keeps unsaved documents for 4 whole days before automatically deleting them.

Talk to your local Computer Troubleshooter about how you can take advantage of these features and other software and technology benefits.