INTRODUCTION:

4SmartPhone makes daily backups of the servers as part of their Enterprise Disaster Recovery Plan. Restoring from those backups is a time-consuming and expensive process, and require us to mobilize server engineers to extract a single user's account data and put back into place. Because of the effort required, a sizable fee ($450) is charged for restoring from the Enterprise backup. 

Fortunately, there are many other ways to avoid the need to ever fall back to a restore from backup. In other words, we have many other features and procedures available to avoid a "Disaster" to recover from in the first place. This Topic discusses common ways to avoid just such a disaster.

DELETED ITEMS

Outlook has its own "Recycle Bin" called Deleted Items. When you delete an item from your email, calendar, tasks, or contacts, the item does not delete. It is moved to the Deleted Items folder instead (note: Items deleted from the Junk Email folder are the exception to this rule. Those items are permanently deleted and do not go to the Deleted Items folder).

All deleted items that go to the Deleted Items folder will stay there indefinitely, and are only removed from your Outlook when they are deleted from there. Empty Deleted Items Folder command will delete all contents of this folder a once.

So if you delete a contact or many contacts, scour your Deleted Items folder. There are good odds that your deleted item is still waiting there for you to drag back to where it belongs.

SERVER DUMPSTER

A widely overlooked feature of using Outlook with an Exchange Server (as opposed to just using Outlook for POP mail, etc.) is that after the Deleted Items folder is emptied and all items are "permanently deleted" from Outlook, they are stored on the server for yet another 7 days before actually being permanently discarded forever.

To see the items on the server that are still in the server dumpster awaiting the end of their now 7-day lifespan, open Outlook and click on the Deleted Items folder. Then click Tools > Recover Deleted Items from the menu. A new box will come up and display for you all the items that you have deleted from your Deleted Items folder in the past 7 days. There are tool buttons there to allow you to restore selected items back to your Deleted Item folder. 

To return restored items from your Deleted Items folder just drag them back to the folders where they belong. 

MAKING YOUR OWN BACKUPS

We always recommend that our customers make their own backups as well, since it is always much easier for you to restore from. And it also keeps you in full control of your own data.

To make a backup of all your mail, contacts, and calendars, follow these instructions:

1. Open Outlook 
2. Click on the File menu and choose Import and Export
   
   
   
3. Click Export to a file and click Next.
   
   
4. Click Personal Folder File (.pst) and click Next.
   
   
5. Click Mailbox and Include subfolders and click Next. 
   
   
6. Choose the location where you would like to store your backup. Click Browse and navigate there. Choose the name of the PST File. Click OK.
   1. NOTE: I recommend that you choose a location where you can include your PST in your normal computer backup routine. Perhaps a special folder called Outlook Backups in your My Documents, or on your C: Drive. Make sure this folder is included in your normal backup set.
7. Click Finish. 
8. You may just click OK on the last window, but you might want to change the name of your Backup from Personal Folders to something like My Backup so that if you ever have to open your PST in Outlook it will display that name instead of Personal Folders. No password is required, but you may use one if you would like.

Outlook will then Export all your email, calendars, tasks, and contacts to a local PST on your computer. It does not remove anything from the server, so you now have an exact copy of what is in your Outlook today.

It is recommended that you make backups regularly so that you can quickly and easily restore and or all of your data. However, if you truly do have a disaster that you need to recover from (i.e. your computer is stolen or destroyed) you will still have the backups we make to fall back to.