Outlook .pst file, email recovery

[gerf]

Ok, i've had some issues with my OS lately, and somewhere in the middle of this, i did this:

I dragged/dropped all my emails from my backup .pst file's inbox folder to my "new" one. About 5 hours later, my computer craps out somehow, and i have to reinstall the OS, and lose the "new" .pst file. However, the size of the original .pst file has not decreased, despite having the emails dragged/dropped out of it, and not appearing again.

Is there some way to recover those emails? It's only about a 100meg file, and the emails not extremely important, but i'd still like to keep them. But, if i can't recover them, so be it.

[NooNoo]

Have you tried just importing the pst file?

[gerf]

yeah, i got the contacts that were in a 'contacts' folder, but not the emails anywhere

[NooNoo]

this might be the trick

[Ya_know]

The reason the old PST retained the same file size is because it wasn't compacted. Outlook does this on the fly, in the background when outlook is idle. You can also initiate this manually by going into the properties of the PST (in the services section) and hit on the Compact Now button.

The bottom line...If you already moved messages from one PST to another, then lost the second PST, those messages are gone.

[Ya_know]

On that note...attach to the old PST, and compact it. If it shrinks down considerably...my theory is right.