Email vanished from Outlook

[bmeyer1968]

Ok, I think this is a new question, otherwise forgive me and point me to the right thread.

I have a user with a Pearl 8130 and we are using BES 4.1 and Exchange 2003 (on SBS 2003). I have had this user set up and syncing for over a year with no major issues. He has his Inbox syncing as well as several additional email folders. Suddenly last week, all the non-Inbox folders started showing empty on the BB even though existing emails and new emails were in the Outlook folder on the desktop. We had done some testing to figure out the issue last week, but today I got a call from the user and all the same folders on Outlook are empty. The folders are still there, but now, like on the BB, they are empty, or stripped of mail newer than about 5 months ago. Stranger still, his Inbox, which is normally kept to about 100 mails as this user is good about filing things away, was up to 1800+ emails...most of which had been filed away long ago.

Now the really funny part. I did a restore of his mailbox from last week to get the subfolder mails back. I was then going to delete everything older than Friday to clear room for the restored mail in his normal mailbox and right in front of me, the mails started deleting from Inbox. I watched the count go down from 1800 emails to 85 in about 2 minutes and have no idea why they went or where. The remaining 85 mails were also not seperated in any particular order. There were some junk type mails, mails from 2008 and 2009 so it wasn't a 'older than X' delete. I can only look to the BB as the cause or part of the cause as it is too similar an issue, but I am reluctant to put his mail back in from the restore since it may all vanish again.

Other than the obvious, does anyone have an idea what would cause this, is there any way to see if the Blackberry or BES sent the command to clean up the Inbox? I am totally lost as to what would have made the Inbox clean itself up like that.

Thanks for any info,
Bill