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iCloud email backup

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I have Acronis 2016 installed on my PC. I use Outlook 2007 on a PC along with iCloud.  I backup up my PC regularly and I thought I would always be able restore from my Acronis backup to an older Outlook *.pst file if something went wrong with my email. Here is what happened.......

The ios 9.3 update repeatedly locked up my iPhone and iPad  email.  Two days ago while I was looking at the iPhone, 3 email folders just disappeared.  What is on my iPhone stays in sync with my Outlook. I thought I could go to my pc backup and restore the 3 missing email folders.  I did this and the folders were there but with only a shell and no content.  I could see the folders and the list of emails but no content.  When I connected the pc back to the internet it syncs with the iCloud server which instantly deleted the folders again.  So no luck and Apple looked and tried to help me but the files are not on their server and if they are not you are out of luck.  The Mac has a program called Time Machine that makes a copy of the files and with that I assume you can restore old emails.

Looks like no options that I can see to backup iCloud email up on a PC.

Anyone have any ideas?????

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Do you have a recent Acronis backup of your Outlook PST file from your PC?

If you do, then you could try restoring that backup back to your PC but as a different name, then opening the restored PST file within Outlook to get to the missing files / folders in that way.

Alternatively, you could sign out of iCloud on the PC, restore your PST file back, remove the current Outlook data on your phone, then re-synch it all once you have got Outlook back up to date on the PC again, assuming that more recent email data is still held on your ISP email server to be brought back down again.

Hello SanC,

In addition to what Steve said, I would suggest you to temporarily roll back your computer`s state to what it was at backup creation time and see if email folders are not empty.

1) save the current state of your system by running a system backup. Later you can restore from this backup at any time.

2) unplug internet cable/disable WiFi connection to avoid any possibility of Outlook connecting to iCloud

3) restore your PC completely (click Recover disks or Recover PC) to the date when you still had your emails in Outlook

4) open Outlook and see if the emails are there. As it will not have connection to iCloud (internet will still be disconnected), it will not sync with iCloud and will not delete anything

If folders will still be empty, it would mean that actual Outlook data has not been backed up. Starting from 2015 version Acronis True Image creates backups through Microsoft Volume Shadow service layer which has its own filters. For example, Outlook .OST files are excluded by default, you can see the explanation of this at https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/filecab/2007/01/24/why-completepc-backup-does-not-include-ost-files-in-the-backup-image/ .

You can override this setting by manually deleting the parameter OutlookOST from registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\BackupRestore\FilesNotToSnapshot (open Windows Start menu, type regedit, hit Enter to access registry editor). Then, if the issue was indeed caused by this VSS exclusion rule, your iCloud emails would be included in backup.

Lastly, if the above method does not help, you can disable VSS usage completely for particular backup task as explained at https://forum.acronis.com/forum/45832#comment-346558. This way backups would use only Acronis drivers to create backups, like it was in 2014 and all the previous versions of Acronis True Image software.

Regards,

Slava