Outlook 2010 inbox emptying itself

[SeldomFixit]

My Inbox ( Outlook 2010 / Win7 ) has suddenly begun emptying its entire contents on a semi regular basis. I've not fiddled with any settings. Any suggestions welcomed please.
TYIA - SF

[Flying Wild]

Probably auto archiving the contents.

[SeldomFixit]

Thanks FW - question is how do I stop it and where can I find everything it's already eaten? Note: Auto Archive is NOT selected and hasn't been at any time.
Cheers - SF

[ExSp33db1rd]

Blame it on Bill Gates, bound to be something he once thought of.

I blame B.G. for all my present woes, life was a bl**dy sight easier before computers.

( maybe it was a case of Ignorance is Bliss, but it sure was - I think I'll apply for one of the 50% I.Q. reducing pills I've recently been advised of )

[Spitoon]

Possibly the .PST (the Personal Folder) file becoming corrupted or being deleted?

When you say it's started emptying itself, do you mean you see it emptying or that when you open Outlook the messages that were there have gone?

[Milo Minderbinder]

are you also accessing the mailbox from another machine?

has your mail provider placed limits on mailbox size?

how big is the mailbox - you may have hit a size limit

is it old stuff or new stuff thats vanishing?

is it just the inbox or all the mailboxes?

[Keef]

That .pst file is an accident looking to happen - and did, in my case, years ago.
I've not used Outlook since then.

Thunderbird has a separate folder for each e-mail address and mailbox, and those back up automatically to another drive, so important e-mails don't vanish.

What I'll do when Thunderbird disappears I don't yet know...

[SeldomFixit]

Spitoon - initial empty and vanish was everything in the Inbox, oldest item probably 12 months old, newest, that day. Everything in place at shutdown, then at next powerup/Outlook open - everything in Inbox gone.

Milo - No access from other machines. No limit on Inbox size that I would remotely ever reach. Old and new vanished from Inbox. Only Inbox - all other folders remain intact.
Cheers - SF

[Milo Minderbinder]

I'd hazard two guesses
1) the inbox is corrupted and needs repair using the inbox repair tool
How to use Inbox Repair tool to repair pst file in Outlook

2) your outlook PST file is in a nonstandard location, and for some reason Outlook has reverted to a standard location, orphaning the file and creating a new inbox. To repair it try system restore, or else manually editing the data file store locations with the account settings

[SeldomFixit]

Thanks Milo - I'm off on a trip and will run the repair file when I return.
Thanks all for the help and thoughts so far.
Cheers
SF

[The late XV105]

I have experienced this issue with Office 2010 too. It drove me nuts - especially as colleagues thought it was Finger Trouble or other User error when I knew it was not! Eventually, one of them witnessed it by chance when my laptop was connected to a projector. Donk-donk-donk - one by one, about a second apart, my inbox emptied itself to the deleted items folder.

I tried everything from deleting all rules and disabling archiving to running virus and root kit checks to trying the mentioned repair tool - all to no avail.

For a while I lived with it and simply got in the habbit or regularly purging the deleted items folder (or if I was confident, Shift-Deleting to bypass the folder in the knowledge that if I goofed, anything deleting is in fact held on the server anyway for 90 days). This made it easy to simply drag the wanted items back to the inbox without having to search carefully.

In the end I gave up and rebuilt the laptop (in my case easily and quickly done from a system image taken a month before and then by copying my documents from backup). Problem solved - admittedly by somewhat drastic workaround!

The cause remains a mystery beyond establishing that it ONLY happened when connected by WiFi - never by Ethernet.