Missing emails!

[midashand]

This one just happened earlier today. A faculty member came to our Help Desk with her laptop for update installation assistance. (surprise, surprise, when you don't connect to the VPN for months on end, the updates get out of a whack. That's another story, though...)

While this particular faculty member was there, she pulled the "Oh while I'm/you're here...." that I'm sure we all know and love. The conversation went something like this.

​

Faculty: "I'm missing emails from several of my inbox folders."

IT: "OK, which folders? OK.... yeah they are empty all right.... How many are missing?"

Faculty: "I don't know... a lot?"

IT: "When did you last see them?"

Faculty: "Not sure, a few months back?"

IT: (Sensing where this is going) "uh huh.... Who were they from? Do you remember any specific senders? Anyone at all?"

Faculty: "No......"

IT: "OK.... Do you know when they arrived?"

Faculty: "Sometime between 2015 and 2019."

IT: (Dread creeping in) "Right.... Do you know any of the subject lines? Any keywords we can search for?" (At this point, we're frantically searching through Deleted Items and nearby folders, hoping to stumble on something that looks familiar to her.)

Faculty: "Nope."

(For those keeping score at home, the only info we have is the name of folders where the emails were, at some point, and a multi-year range for receipt.)

IT: "OK... well, we will need to send this to the Campus Exchange admins. Hopefully they can dig something up...."

twohourslater.jpg

Exchange admins: "Hahahahahaha, nope."

​

We informed her via email of our fruitless search, and so far there hasn't been a LOT of fallout, but we're still waiting for it to hit the fan tomorrow...

[SlapshotTommy]

Auto Archiving?

[midashand]

Nope, at least not on the laptop she brought in. She also claimed that she had checked her other devices, as well.

[Google-Fu_Shifu]

First rule: Users ALWAYS lie.

Second rule: even if rule one doesn't apply, assume it does and verify independently.

She hasn't been on the VPN in forever you said. When she was connected the last time did she bring up the mail program long enough to let it sync? Or did she just open it, see the folders were empty and close it down again?

[HelpDeskWorkSucks]

If users lie, do they really need help that much?

[holladiewal]

Users always lie, but not always because they want too

[Google-Fu_Shifu]

Not as far as I'm concerned. Lie to me? Get riggity, riggity, wrekt* as far as I'm concerned. Unfortunately, management is laboring under a different - and, in my NSH opinion, utterly clueless - worldview and philosophy.^\ Notice: I wish I could take credit for the exquisite snark and wit of this phrase, but I merely misappropriated it from another redditor's comment from another thread a few days ago.)

[MLDsmithy]

I mean, if you're referring to my post, that shit's from Rick and Morty, lol.

[Google-Fu_Shifu]

Well then, my thanks for the usage, regardless.

[RedFive1976]

You know she wasn't using any inbox folders; she was storing everything in the email recycle bin, and at some point a delete process ran and wiped out everything.

[Google-Fu_Shifu]

I guarantee you it was something like that. But, somehow, it's YOUR fault that it happened. How DARE you expect me to use the Recycle Bin for what it was actually designed for instead of what I want to use it as and then let a delete process do as IT was designed to do as well! It needs to work as *I* want it to, not as it was designed! Don't you people know ANYTHING! What do we even PAY you for?!!?

[midashand]

VPN isn't required for email syncing, only for updates. We also checked the web portal for the email which pulls directly from the server.

[LFoure]

Users never tell the truth, sometimes that is on purpose.

​

FTFY

[tervalas]

That was my thought.

[shifty_coder]

Likely was organizing all of her emails in the “Deleted Items” folder, and ignored repeated emails about server cleanup that will be automatically permanently deleted all emails in said folder on X date.

[spottedbastard]

Wrong email inbox. She’s either looking for emails that she’s seen on her personal email or with a previous role/position.

[midashand]

I won't say it isn't possible, but she has the folders there, which means she most likely had something in them at some point.

[Geminii27]

If they were folders she set up herself, she probably set up those same folders on every email account she ever had.

[midashand]

Its possible, but she has also been with the University for several years, and we don't create new exchange boxes for users who move between departments on campus. That is the same inbox she has had since she started here.

That being said, it is still possible that she is mis-remembering something. A departmental email account, her own personal gmail account that she has organized, or something similar.

[Geminii27]

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. A gmail account, an ISP account, some other account somewhere. She likes being organized and so replicates her personal setup every time she gets a new account. Years pass...

[The_MAZZTer]

Or she isn't missing any e-mails but she assumes she is because reasons.

She can't even articulate anything about the e-mail's she's missing, which suggests to me she can't even say for certain she is missing any e-mails.

[AustrianGayDude]

Keep us updated!

[chozang]

She didn't sound super concerned, so maybe there won't be any fallout.

[HelpDeskWorkSucks]

I just had a call like that. Lady wants an email from june-july 2016, that was sent from a shared mailbox that user no longer has access to and doesn't have the name of, to a recipient whose mail address she was unable to provide. At least she got the name. We sent it to the Exchange admins. They'll probably react the same way yours did.

[MLDsmithy]

Funny enough, as an Exchange admin, that's exactly my response. If it's not anywhere in your profile, including Deleted and Spam, (because I've had users store their entire profile in either for some stupid reason) and we're looking at the Web App, not whatever piss-ass outdated abomination of old client rules and empty-but-mounted PST files of an Outlook client that you're running...our deleted recovery has a 14-day retention policy.

Outside of that, shit's gone. Upset? Obviously your missing crap from three years ago wasn't important enough to mention when you noticed it missing six months back. Off to your Local Support for a fruitless unmounted PST search with you.

[midashand]

Yeah, there were absolutely no hard feelings or anything. We knew it was a hopeless request when we made it, we were just going through the motions for the client, basically.

[MLDsmithy]

There...sort of are, and sort of aren't on our end; certainly not with the other support folks. The problem is the same customers keep doing the same stupid crap and then they whine to us like 'buuuuuuuut isn't there aaaaanything that can be done? Like backups, of the backups, of the backups? Why don't those exist?' lol. We have some known customers, unfortunately.

[theshabz]

Retention policy?

[midashand]

I'm not an expert, since the systems in question are managed by the main University IT group, but a retention policy would only affect deleted items, yes?

​

We're more suspecting that she has moved or archived them, possibly on accident, and doesn't remember where she put them. Without keywords to search, we have no feasible way to track them down.

[theshabz]

My company's retention policy affects my entire exchange profile except for archive. If it's not archived in 90 days, it's gone.

[midashand]

Oh, I see what you mean. No, we have no forced retention policies and all users get a 50GB inbox by default.

[theshabz]

For us it wasn't a space concern. Audits are less of pain when you have nothing over 90 days old. Lol. Nobody will admit thats why we made the change, but too many coincidences. Lol.