Company owner is "Missing" emails.

[thecomputerguy]

I've been in a battle with the owner of a company who has for weeks been claiming that emails are missing, or emails are being sent at one time but she is not getting them, or she is not getting them until a day later, or she gets them and then they "disappear". No one else in this company has email issues except her. None of my other companies on Office 365 have issue like this, it's completely unique to her. I told her she needs to give me examples of when this happens so I can try and trace what's going on with these messages.

She emails me and says this:

Did not come in last night came in this am had to put in the name Ana to find this Ty

Which essentially means, he employee emailed her something about someone named Ana on a Sunday and she didn't "See" it until she manually searched for it on Monday. Essentially claiming it wasn't delivered and she can't find it unless she searches for it.

I login and search for it. Find it in the Inbox, manually go track it down in the Inbox and THERE IT IS exactly where it's supposed to be delivered on that Sunday it was sent. So I explain to her, that it's right here exactly where it's supposed to be and she's adamant that it wasn't there, and even if it was it was sent on Sunday and she didn't see it until Monday.

She then shows me another example of an email the same employee sent. She scrolls down here inbox and says, "Look there it is! Never saw it!". I look at it and it's sitting there unread but it's exactly where it's supposed to be. I explain... is it possible that you are just missing emails? Her: "Nope not possible".

Notes:

- Office 365
- She's not hacked (Password has been changed)
- Secure Password with MFA enabled
- Azure logins all show correct logins
- No Rules created in Outlook or OWA
- No filtering being done in Outlook, just standard default views

THE BIG NOTE:

- She get's several hundred emails a day

That's right ... using today as an example, all before 10AM she has received 50 emails some are junk (but legit junk she signed up for) since the company uses her email for a lot of purchasing type stuff (interior designers). At this pace I expect her to end her day around 6pm or 7pm with upwards of what? 400 emails in a single day? Her inbox is currently sitting at 85GB (E3), and she has over 100k emails in her inbox, so I need to enable archiving.

I feel like she is just F'ing with me and she's literally just missing emails, or deleting emails on accident or something.

Anyone ever dealt with an airhead like this?

 

[nlinecomputers]

She isn't messing with you. Managing email is a legitimate problem. You need to make sure focused inbox is OFF. That feature sucks and it can hide emails that are important. You need to also get her to set up some rules to manage the mail. If she is getting advertising mail that she wants but doesn't want to read immediately then set up rules to move that email OUT of the inbox and into dedicated folders. She also needs to unsubscribe from the stuff she doesn't read. Inbox rules can also be set up for people she needs to see emails from, like co-workers, so that an alert pops up telling her that an email has arrived.

Maybe point her towards @callthatgirl as you seem unwilling to help.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Internal emails are....really reliable. Not like trying to find email sent from external people. but you could bring up message tracking and show her.
Agree about killing focused inbox.

 

[Computer Bloke]

I know it's obvious, but are you sure she's displaying her messages in date order? For those with cluttered inboxes accidental alphabetical sorting is by far the leading cause of "lost" messages.

 

[thecomputerguy]

Internal emails are....really reliable. Not like trying to find email sent from external people. but you could bring up message tracking and show her.
Agree about killing focused inbox.

Message trace shows that some of these emails were delivered to the inbox but they are no where to be found, not searchable, not in junk, not in deleted, and not in deleted recovery. Focused inbox is disabled.

 

[thecomputerguy]

I know it's obvious, but are you sure she's displaying her messages in date order? For those with cluttered inboxes accidental alphabetical sorting is by far the leading cause of "lost" messages.

All filters are disabled and the mail is sorted by date > newest on top

 

[nlinecomputers]

Message trace shows that some of these emails were delivered to the inbox but they are no where to be found, not searchable, not in junk, not in deleted, and not in deleted recovery. Focused inbox is disabled.

All filters are disabled and the mail is sorted by date > newest on top

What about in outlook on the web?

 

[nlinecomputers]

Sign in to Outlook

outlook.office.com

 

[thecomputerguy]

What about in outlook on the web?

Same as OWA, no filtering, sorted by date > newest at the top

No inbox rules, no sweep rules, time zone is correct

Searching for "missing mail" yields the same result as searching in Outlook desktop, major inconsistencies.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

So next...I agree...compare in OWA.
Sometimes (depending on health of the computer)..the OST file gets corrupted. Can act..sluggigh. You can just close Outlook, delete the OST, launch Outlook, it will quickly rebuild the OST. No data is lost.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Dang...typed that right when you did. Hmmm....she getting email on the phone? Another thing to put under the microscope.

 

[nlinecomputers]

Time to open a ticket with Microsoft.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Why? I have had this happen legitimately once and it was due to a bug associated with adding a new domain to a tenant. Very much a one off.

A single user not seeing a mail? Sorry... the human is blind. Search made it be found only because it brought it to the top of the stack. It's STUPIDLY easy to simply not see something on a human level. Just as it's easy for a user to roll up "today" and you wind up getting calls that email is delayed 24 hours.

The mail is not missing... And if it is, check her login history for odd IP addresses.

 

[putz]

@thecomputerguy
Check audit logs for the mailbox?
Did you check and see which mobile devices are connected to the account and get rid of them all from the server side?
Is there some sort of retention policy created that is affecting their mailbox?...An archiving policy?

 

[callthatgirl]

I had a client call today with the same issue. I added the "in folder" to the view and found it in the archive folder. He's on 365, no idea why they are going there lol.