Outlook 365 - Empty Inbox - Win 11

My Outlook is from Microsoft 365 and I leave my it open all day long until I turn off my computer. I replied to an email from a streaming service. I still have that reply in my sent file. That is all I did, I did no deleting of anything, yet when I returned my attention to the Inbox there was a message that there was nothing to display. At least 80 Inbox items had disappeared. I restarted Outlook and then restarted the computer, all to no avail. I have managed to retrieve all my Inbox messages, which I found in the deleted folder. In addition, I backup my Outlook PST file on a weekly basis in case something like this happens. I know someone is going to think that I accidentally deleted my entire Inbox without me realizing it but, I assure you that is not the case. So I can avoid anything like this happening in the future, does anyone have any idea what happened this time to delete my entire Inbox? Thanks.

Something is wrong with Microsoft, my dad hasn't been able to receive Hotmail in his Office Outlook for weeks but MS Outlook (app) works, my hotmail /outlook mail is intermittent.

Do you have a cat or other small animal? I wonder if he/she stood on the keyboard & managed to select all then the Del key or something similar.

Bastet said:

Do you have a cat or other small animal? I wonder if he/she stood on the keyboard & managed to select all then the Del key or something similar.

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LOL, no animals at all.

I've been working with / on computers for 40 years and have indeed seen many strange, inexplicable things happen. Candidly, in this instance it's hard to believe user error wasn't in some way a contributing factor, but I guess it's not impossible. In any event, the good news is you had a copy of your .pst file so you were able to retrieve all but the most current messages.

HDL said:

LOL, no animals at all.

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Thanks. Rules those out.

allan said:

I've been working with / on computers for 40 years and have indeed seen many strange, inexplicable things happen. Candidly, in this instance it's hard to believe user error wasn't in some way a contributing factor, but I guess it's not impossible. In any event, the good news is you had a copy of your .pst file so you were able to retrieve all but the most current messages.

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I totally agree with you about the user error. However, I can assure you that, to the best of my knowledge, I did not tell Outlook to either delete all my Inbox messages, nor did I tell it to empty the Inbox folder. The latter of which requires two interactions of the user, the former only one, I believe. I too have been using computers of one for or another for over 40 years back when punch tapes or punch cards were required. Ran through all the DOS programs also. I believe MS Office first offered Outlook with Office 97. In any case, whenever it first came out, that is when my company required its use. In all that time, I never made this mistake before, but stranger things have happened to me over the years, so I can not rule it out. Hopefully, it never happens again.

I still have a box on 98 column punch cards I use for notes LOL

And I believe you didn't do anything intentionally. But accidents do happen. If not, we both know that gremlins do exist where computers are concerned