Client emails are disappearing from my inbox after they are forwarded to my alternative inbox

Hi @Beverly Roche, 

I hope you’re having a great day. Thank you for reaching out, and I truly appreciate the details you provided. 

To better assist you, could you please share the following: 

1. Are you using a Microsoft personal account (Outlook.com/Hotmail), or a work/school account provided by an organization (Microsoft 365/Exchange)? 
2. For the most recent missing email: what was the approximate date/time, sender address, and subject line? 
3. When you search, are you searching “All folders/All Outlook items,” and have you checked the Focused/Other tab (if enabled) and Archive? 
4. Have you checked “Recover Deleted Items” (recoverable items) in Deleted Items? 

Once I have this information, I’ll be better positioned to guide you through the next steps. 

Since you haven’t specified your account type (work/school vs. personal), I may not be able to provide an exact solution yet. Assuming you’re using a work account, please try the steps below. If you’re using a personal account, please let me know and I’ll tailor the guidance for that scenario. 

1/ Check “Recover deleted items” (server-side recovery) 

• Go to Deleted Items 
• Click “Recover items deleted from this folder” and restore the message if found.  
• 

Additional guidance: Recover and restore deleted items in Outlook - Microsoft Support 

2/ Check Microsoft 365 Quarantine (If allowed by your organization) 

• Visit: https://security.microsoft.com/quarantine 
• Search by sender / subject / time received and release the message if available  
• 

More info here: Find and release quarantined messages as a user - Microsoft Defender for Office 365 | Microsoft Lea… 

3/ Review Inbox Rules (most common cause of “disappearing” messages) 

• In OWA: Settings (gear) > View all Outlook settings > Mail > Rules 
• 
• Look for any rule that moves, deletes, archives, marks as read, or redirects messages especially rules applying broadly (e.g., “all messages”). 

4/ Contact your IT 

If you still can’t find the email after the steps above, I recommend reaching out to your organization’s IT/Admin team to run a Message Trace in the Exchange Admin Center. This will confirm whether the email was delivered, filtered, quarantined, or redirected and where it ended up. 

To help IT trace it quickly, please share with them: Approximate date/time received; sender address; subject line (or keywords) 

IT admins can refer to this article: Message trace in the new EAC in Exchange Online | Microsoft Learn 

In case your IT department cannot access the necessary information or make the required changes, I recommend asking them to open a request with Microsoft Support team through the Microsoft Admin Center. They have access to backend configurations and can perform a more in-depth investigation. At the very least, they can provide the most effective workaround to ensure your experience remains smooth and secure.     

As community moderators, we appreciate your understanding that we do not have access to the administrative tools or permissions required to investigate or modify these configurations. We also do not have the capability to initiate remote sessions for direct assistance. Our role is to guide users to the appropriate resources and support channels.  

I hope this information is helpful. Should you have any further questions or need additional assistance, feel free to reach out.  

I'm looking forward to your response.

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