OL97: E-mail Messages Disappear from the Inbox

E-mail messages may disappear from your Inbox after they have been read, or they may begin disappearing before you read them if the preview pane is open.

Two possible causes for this behavior are:

• You have a filter that applies to only display unread messages.
• You are looking at a Microsoft Exchange Mailbox and have an instance of Outlook running that has delivery set to a Personal Folders (.pst) file.

Use one of the following methods to work around this behavior:

Cause 1

To remove all filters, follow these steps:

1. On the View menu, click Filter.
2. Click Clear All, and then click OK.

All e-mail messages, both read and unread, are now visible.

Cause 2

If you view your Inbox on an Exchange Server mailbox, verify that the delivery point is set to your mailbox and not a Personal Folders (.pst) file anywhere you are running Outlook. To do this:

1. On the Tools menu, click Services.
2. Click the Delivery tab, verify that Deliver new mail to the following location is set to your mailbox, and then click OK.

For additional information about missing email messages, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: