Retrieve Deleted Emails from Outlook 2003, 2007, Mac OS X, Outlook Express - Free Software Download!

When you delete an email, it is usually moved to a "Deleted Items" folder (as in MS Outlook) or similar ("Trash" in Gmail, Yahoo etc...)

This "Deleted Items" folder works in a way like a Recycle Bin for emails and it gives you a short window of opportunity to retrieve accidentally deleted email messages. Even if you've deleted the email from your Deleted Items folder - retrieving the email is still possible.

How is that?

Well, because when you delete an email and it goes to Deleted Items, what happens is that the message is just copied to the Deleted Items folder and deleted from your Inbox. When an email is deleted - it is not physically erased. The data is just marked as having been deleted, so the email program you are using doesn't display it. The deleted email doesn't get overwritten until the mail program cleans up or compacts it's database.

So, there is a window of opportunity therefore of a short time frame, during which it is possible to retrieve deleted emails, completely.

The reason why emails can be retrieved is because the operating system doesn't immediately reuse space from deleted emails - an email can be retrieved (or undeleted) right after it's lost and for a while afterwards. However, the chances of a perfect undelete decrease the longer you leave it, because eventually some or all of that space will be re-used.

The chances of successfully retrieving deleted emails also depends on how full your computer hard drive is. The fuller and the less space there is available, the sooner the free space is going to be used by other files.

Also, if you have formatted your hard drive after the email was deleted, then you probably have reduced your chances of a successful recovery. Many of the clues to the location of the deleted email will be lost. However, if you haven't and if you act quickly - you have a great chance to retrieve the email completely.

Retrieve deleted email software tools that can help you undelete files are not provided as standard in any operating system. You will need third party undelete software to do this. Below, is a review of one that works really well...

If you are a Windows user, consider Data Recovery Pro for the following reasons:

Data Recovery Pro by Paretologic., is a sophisticated retrieve deleted email software program, with powerful built-in tools that help you locate lost emails instantly amongst the thousands of files on a hard drive.

The program is free to download, and once you install it, you are provided with a range of built-in viewers which let you examine the email it finds before recovery. If you see your "deleted" email - then simply follow the steps and prompts to retrieve it successfully.

It's pretty simple. If the email can't be recovered - you will see that for yourself, so essentially you are getting a risk-free trial to see if you can get that missing email back.

Whether you have accidentally deleted your important files or the hard drive is corrupted or even when the volume does not mount, Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery is the solution. It scans your Mac hard drive and extracts your deleted files.

With Data Recovery Pro, you can select the Outlook Express emails you want to retrieve, even preview them and save them to a place on your computer where they will be safe.

This retrieve deleted email tool understands the internals of the system used to store Outlook Express emails, and finds clues to the whereabouts of the disk space that was occupied by a deleted email. As long as you act quickly - you will be able to retrieve your emails completely.

What about Web Mail based emails such as Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, MSN, Gmail etc...? - How do you retrieve these deleted email files?

The same way!

Just Select from the "Scan Specific Email Profile" drop-down box the email type you need to retrieve. Using Data Recovery Pro, it is completely possible to recover accidentally deleted Web based email messages (such as Yahoo, Hotmail or Gmail).

However, the software will only be able to do this only if you have previously opened and looked at the email message on your computer before (the message is cached to your computer and can be recovered as a HTML page).