The call from Linlithgow usually comes about a week after the new computer arrives. The old PC died, the photos and documents were copied across from a backup, and everything looked fine until Outlook was opened. Now someone needs to recover emails from a dead PC, and nobody is sure whether that is even possible.
What Outlook shows is a fortnight of messages in the inbox, an empty Sent folder and no address book. It is the pattern we see most often from households and home offices, and in most cases the mail is not lost. It is sitting in a single file on the old machine’s drive.
This guide explains why the new PC only shows a sliver of your email, where the rest actually lives, and how our data recovery service gets it back. Read the first two sections before you do anything to the old computer, because one or two well-meant steps can make the job much harder.
Why the New PC Only Shows Two Weeks of Email
It comes down to how the account was set up years ago. Older set-ups, especially addresses from a broadband provider or a small web-hosting package, usually use a method called POP. With POP, Outlook downloads each message onto the PC and then deletes it from the provider’s server, typically a fortnight later.
So the server only ever holds the last two weeks of your inbox. Everything older exists in one place: a data file on the old computer. Sent mail, contacts and the calendar never went to the server at all.
The newer method, IMAP, works the other way round. The mail lives on the provider’s server and each device simply shows a copy, which is why a phone and a laptop can both see the same folders. Microsoft 365, Outlook.com and Gmail accounts keep their mail on the server in the same way.
Check This First: Is the Mail Still on the Server?
Before assuming anything needs recovering, sign in to your email on the provider’s website from a phone or tablet. If every folder and years of old messages are there, nothing is lost. You only need the account set up properly on the new PC, which we can do in a remote support session.
If webmail shows only recent messages, the rest is on the old drive and the remainder of this guide applies.
There is one catch with a plain IMAP account in Outlook: its Contacts and Calendar folders are marked “This computer only”. They are stored on the PC, not the server, so an address book can vanish with the old machine even when every email survives. Microsoft 365 and Outlook.com accounts keep those online as well.
Where Outlook Really Keeps Your Mail
This is the part that catches out even careful people. Email is rarely kept anywhere a normal backup looks.
- Outlook with a POP account keeps everything in a
.pstfile. Recent set-ups put it inDocuments\Outlook Files. PCs where Outlook has been upgraded over the years often still keep it inC:\Users\yourname\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook. - Outlook with IMAP or Microsoft 365 keeps its local copy in an
.ostfile in that same AppData folder. - Windows Live Mail, which plenty of people kept using long after Microsoft retired it, stores each message as a separate file under
AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail. - Thunderbird keeps mail, address book and settings together in a profile folder under
AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird.
The common thread is AppData. It is a hidden folder, so it never appears when someone drags Documents, Pictures and Desktop onto a USB drive. The backup looks complete, the old PC gets wiped or recycled, and the mail goes with it.
How This Job Usually Goes on Our Bench
A typical Linlithgow case looks like this. An older desktop stops starting, the family buys a replacement, and a relative restores Documents and Pictures from an external drive. Outlook on the new machine shows about two weeks of inbox and nothing else.
The old PC has usually failed because its hard drive was wearing out, and that matters. We take the drive out and make a complete copy of it before looking for anything, rather than starting the dying computer again and again. Then we search the copy, hidden folders included, for the mail file.
This is where our routine differs from most guides. Search online for a damaged Outlook file and you will be told to run the Inbox Repair Tool, scanpst.exe, on it.
That tool rewrites the file as it works. Run it on the only copy, on a failing drive, and a recoverable mailbox can become an unrecoverable one.
So the repair only ever happens on a duplicate, on a healthy disk. It often needs several passes before it reports no errors. Then we open the result in classic Outlook and check the oldest messages, the newest ones and a few attachments before calling it recovered.
When a drive has bad patches, the usual outcome is that the folders, the contacts and almost all the mail come back. A batch of orphaned messages lands in a “Lost and Found” folder to be sorted, and a few emails that sat on the damaged part of the disk are gone for good. We say that at the start rather than promise everything.
What Not to Do With the Old PC
- Don’t keep trying to start it. If the drive is failing, each attempt uses up some of what is left. Our guide to getting data off a laptop that won’t power on explains why a dead computer rarely means a dead drive.
- Don’t reset or reinstall Windows to see whether that revives it. A reset is built to keep the folders you can see; the hidden ones, where the mail lives, are not treated with the same care. If a reinstall is genuinely needed, our Windows installation service copies the mail store off first.
- Don’t run repair tools on the original file. Copy it somewhere safe and work on the copy.
- Don’t send the old PC for recycling until someone has confirmed the email is safely across.
If Windows has already been reset, stop using the machine. An older copy of your user folders sometimes survives for a short while in a folder called Windows.old, and every hour of normal use makes that less likely.
Newer Laptops: Encryption and Cloud Folders
Two extra hurdles apply when the dead machine is a recent laptop rather than an old tower.
First, many recent Windows laptops encrypt their drive automatically. Once the drive is out of the laptop, nothing on it can be read without the recovery key, which is normally saved in the owner’s Microsoft account. Our guide to finding a BitLocker recovery key shows where to look.
Second, if Documents was being synced to OneDrive, the Outlook file may have been swept into the cloud along with it. OneDrive struggles to upload that file while Outlook has it open, so the online copy can be weeks out of date. It is still worth checking, because an older copy of your mail beats none.
Getting the Mail Onto the New PC
A recovered .pst can be opened directly in classic Outlook or imported into the new mailbox, folders and all. We use classic Outlook for this because the newer Outlook app handles these files differently.
An .ost is harder. It was built to work only with the Outlook profile that created it, so it cannot simply be opened on another computer. For those accounts the mail is normally still on the server, and it is only the “This computer only” contacts and calendar that need extracting with specialist tools.
Windows Live Mail and Thunderbird stores carry over well, either into a current mail program or converted into a format Outlook can import.
Then comes the step that stops a repeat. Where the provider supports it and the mailbox has room, we switch the account to IMAP and upload the old mail to the server, so it no longer depends on one file on one machine.
Where it doesn’t, the mail file gets added to a backup that actually includes it. Our guide to moving files from an old PC to a new one covers the rest of the move.
When to Bring It In
If webmail shows everything, you have a set-up job, not a recovery. If the old PC still starts and you can find the mail file, copy it to an external drive before doing anything else, and you may not need us at all.
Bring it in when the old computer won’t start, the drive is making noises, the mail file won’t open, or Windows has already been reset. We handle data recovery in Linlithgow by workshop drop-off or collection, and the same applies whether you are in Broxburn, Uphall or Bathgate. Our workshop is on the west side of Edinburgh, a straightforward run from Linlithgow along the M9.
Once the email is safe, the old machine still needs a decision. If it is a laptop worth saving, our laptop repair service in Linlithgow can look at the fault itself.
If it is not, remember that its drive still holds every message you ever sent. Use our IT recycling service rather than the tip, so the drive is wiped or destroyed before the machine goes anywhere.
Last updated: 5 October 2026