My saved e-mail draft disappeared -- Can it be recovered?

Hi Wingnut_1,

Let me help you with your concern. There is a possibility that you accidentally moved your draft email to another folder. We would like you to try to search for it. 

To search a specific email using subject line or title, you can use Advanced search feature in Outlook.com. Please follow the steps below on how to do it:

1. Sign in to www.outlook.com.

2. In you inbox, click the Search email bar at the top of "Folders" and click Advanced search.

3. Under "Advanced search," you can now use subject or keywords to search emails.

4. Click Search.

If anything is unclear or if there is anything I can do for you, please feel free to let me know.

• I was writing the draft and successfully saved it numerous times during writing.
• I successfully saved it as a draft at the end of writing.
• I navigated away from the message by going back to my Inbox.
• I did NOT get a warning message advising that I was navigating away from the page and about to throw away the message. (I get this warning if the draft hasn't been saved, so lack of the warning further confirmed it was saved.)
  
• At that point it should have been in my Drafts folder.  And at the very least, ONE of the saved versions should have been there since I saved it numerous times.
  
• After closing it for the final time, I did not reopen or move the message. I did not even go to the Drafts folder.
  
• I opened a "new" blank draft from the inbox, edited it and successfully saved it. (Note that I did not accidentally overwrite the first draft with the second.  This would be impossible since I completely closed the first draft, went to my Inbox and opened a new blank draft by clicking on the "New" button.  It was blank when I opened it and began editing.)
  
• I navigated to SkyDrive to upload files.
• I navigated back to Drafts to retrieve the first message to attach the SkyDrive files, and it was not in the Drafts folder.
• I searched for it everywhere and cannot find it.  It simply disappeared.
• It was not visibly in my Drafts folder, my Inbox, my Sent folder, my Delete folder, or any adjacent subfolders.
• It did not turn up in an extensive "Search".
• This happened in the morning.  I tried to review "History" at the end of the day with no luck.
• This has never happened before.
  

Hi Wingnut_1,

We apologize for the inconvenience.

We understand that you have already tried the recovery option and was still unable to recover the missing draft. If this is the case, we would like to inform you that the missing draft can no longer be recovered since it has already been purged from the system.

Let us know if you have further questions.

Thank you.

Johan

I have the same problem. 

I saved a draft several times as I worked on it and the saves were confirmed.  Now that I want to send it, I can't find it, and it's not in Inbox, Sent, Drafts, Junk, Deleted.  Nor does it restore to Deleted and I have enabled that feature.  Nor does it return on an advanced search by intended recipient or keyword.  Nor does it show up when I check ALL my folders manually.

It was a personal email and I'm very concerned it has been sent out to God-knows-whom.

Please help.

Hi, Vivien_M,

Many thanks for your prompt response.

Can you please explain how a draft -- which has been confirmed as saved -- disappears WITHOUT going to the Deleted folder and without being recoverable to that folder using the activated recovery feature?

That way I can avoid the disappearance of drafts in the future.

Many thanks again.

Hi kmckeon,

As mentioned by my colleague, Vivien_M., an email that is saved in the Draft folder will be moved to the sent folder after it has been sent. There is a possibility that the email disappeared from that folder because it was already sent to its recipient. In that case, the email will not be recovered through the self-recovery feature since it was not moved to the Deleted folder. However, if the saved email has no recipient, it should stay in the Draft folder.

Furthermore, we would like to verify if the issue happened when saving the draft on the web-based Outlook.com or via mail client as emails will not be recovered via recovery link if they were deleted from email clients like Windows Live Mail, Microsoft Office Outlook, etc.

If you have other questions or clarifications, please let us know.

Thank you.

Thanks for your prompt reply, RoseKatrina_H,

I agree that a draft that was never sent should stay in the Drafts folder.  But this one just disappeared without ever being sent and without appearing in Inbox, Sent, Drafts, Junk, or Deleted. 

Nor does it restore to Deleted even though I have enabled that feature.  Nor does it return on an advanced search by intended recipient or keyword.  Nor does it show up when I check ALL my folders manually.

That's the question:  how does a draft just disappear without going to some other folder first?  I see from the Community that this is a frequent problem.

Thanks again for any info that can help avoid this again in the future.

Hi, Vivien_M,

Thanks again for the quick response.

It is possible that somebody hacked into my account and did nothing but delete a single draft of a personal letter.  But I doubt it.  And I've changed my password in any case.

I'm actually in IT, and it is natural to assume the odd problem is user error or "a virus".  Until the large number of complaints indicates that dependable users on virus-free systems are also having trouble.

In this case, though, how would my anti-virus software on my local computer, for example, purge a draft from the outlook.com servers?

Many thanks as always for your help.