Outlook: Recovering Lost Private Public-Folder Views

Recently, someone mistakenly deleted a public folder. Many users had set up views visible only to me. When the public folder was restored, these private views were no longer available, even though I could see them as hidden folders in my mailbox. Can I make the views point to the restored copy of the folder?

—Elaine Cofrancesco

In June 2000, InstantDoc ID 8650, I explained that Outlook stores custom views as individual items either in the target folder (public views) or in the user's mailbox (private views). Each private view item stores the Entry ID of the target folder in two binary properties.

Unfortunately, Outlook and Exchange treat a restored folder as a new folder, assigning a new Entry ID. You can't edit the binary-view properties that store the target folder's ID. Therefore, you can't point an existing view at a different folder, even if it's a previously existing folder that you restored.