Week 29 Article 04 - Have you lost emails after creating a new outlook profile for an existing user?

Platform: Microsoft Outlook 2003 (with any service pack levels)

Symptoms:
After installing Outlook on a laptop for a user and configuring it to use exchange server, the user complained that some of the emails were missing.
On further analysis, it was found that quite a few folders in his mailbox had the same issue. Where there was emails before, now there is nothing but empty space!

Troubleshooting Steps:
1. Had a look at his Deleted Items for fear that maybe he had deleted them by mistake. No luck.
2. Tried recovering out of the Deleted Items for fear they might have been emptied out. No luck
3. Edited registry to enable recovery of hard deleted items for fear the user might have deleted items by bypassing the Deleted Items bin. No luck
4. Tried looking for PSTs on old and existing laptop, thinking there might have been an autoarchive done by outlook. No luck.

Solution:
I found out that if Use Cached Exchange Mode is enabled in Outlook, there are sometimes errors when the initial cache of the emails is created on the machine (this is normally when the user has got > 1GB of mailbox size). And if this happens, the emails in error are MOVED to the folder Sync Issues\Server Failures. You do not necessarily see the Sync Issues Folder unless you do a full folder listing in Outlook.

Moral: Never say DIE! And sometimes the customer is RIGHT. Well I did say SOMETIMES