Recovering from an Outlook “uh oh”
Today a client called me in a panic. She had inadvertently removed the category from several hundred contacts. Of course this couldn’t have happened at a more inopportune moment – she was preparing an important mailing about a very important event!
She asked if her Crashplan backup would save her. Unfortunately, the answer was no. Crashplan and other services only backup data such as Microsoft Word documents and photos. Categories in Outlook are a funny thing, there is no easy way to back them up. Next she wondered if her hosted exchange provider could restore her Outlook. Sadly, again the answer was no. Most hosted exchange providers do not provide brick level, individual mailbox restores. They really should offer it, IMHO (even as an optional upgrade, if not a standard feature).
I sat with this for a minute and an idea came to me. What if I could sort the contacts by category, then use the Field Chooser to find a “recently modified” field and then add it to the Outlook column bar? I discovered the “modified” field in the “All Appointments” drop down. Now she could sort by that field, and quickly identify the 130 some odd contacts for whom she had removed the category! It didn’t take long for her to add back the missing information so she could take care of the important mailing.
Going the extra mile and getting creative when many consultants would have said tough luck really made all the difference in the world for this client.
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