Sent email missing

Question

Sent email missing

Sabrina Gant 0

I sent an email to two recipients. I know both recipients received the email but there is no trace of it in my sent items. I have checked archive and deleted and I have logged in on a browser and recovered deleted items.

I need to retain a copy of the email as legal evidence.

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2 answers

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Answer 1

Brian Tillman 27,030 Independent Advisor

Hi. I'm Brian and I'll try to help.

I'll first state that if something needs to be retained for legal reasons, DON'T keep it in an online email service. Save it to local storage and keep more than one copy of it. Storage devices are cheap and provide a much safer means of making sure you have something you may need later.

How is your Sent Items sorted? Can I assume that you're using Outlook.com online, since that's the topic of this forum? Have you tried searching for the message at the mailbox level? Sometimes a missort can appear to hide a message.

If the message isn't in the Sent Items, Deleted Items or "Recover items deleted from this folder" folder, then it is gone and cannot be recovered.

Sabrina Gant 0 Reputation points

2026-09-14T21:25:29.7966667+00:00

Hi Brian, thanks for this.

I was doing exactly that.

After sending the email, I went to sent items so that I could print a copy to PDF for safekeeping. Unfortunately it was missing. I have sent items sorted by date, descending. I have tried searching by recipient, conversation thread, subject title and specific key words. I have searched all folders, all accounts, including deleted and archived. It's a mystery why it never wrote a copy to my sent items but the recipients received it.

Answer 2

Brian Tillman 27,030 Independent Advisor

I have never encountered this issue myself. Can the recipient send it back to you with the message history from their reception so you have a copy of your original message? Also consider always BCCing an outside address you create just for this purpose.

I'll step away and you can see if you get any other suggestions from the many people in this forum. Sorry I couldn't help.

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