As an unfortunate reminder of the risks of running pre-release software on production systems, customers who were trying out the Outlook 2013 Preview encountered an alarming bug.
A TechNet forums thread on the matter opens with this sad tale:
When I use the Cleanup Tools to “empty the deleted items folder permanently”, everything is deleted from the mailbox. All mail items, contacts, tasks and calendar items.
Nothing is retrievable via the “Recover Deleted Items” option.
Fortunately the Microsoft team were quick to investigate and have released an update to fix the problem.
If you installed Outlook 2013 via MSI, please go install the patch right now.
Workaround steps if you’ve hit this issue:
- Immediately put your Outlook 2013 client in Cached Mode. This will keep you from hitting the bug in the future (instructions are below).
- Attempt to recover your data from the Exchange Dumpster, using Recover Deleted Items
- If you can’t recover your deleted items (as many have indicated here), please reach out to your Exchange admin to investigate the dumpster on the server. We’re working with the Exchange team here in Redmond to see if we can offer any other options to try and recover any lost information.
Download the updates:
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