Recover open items on Outlook Crash
Please either reopen all open items (Drafts or Emails) after Outlook crashes, or at least provide a recovery option similar to Excel, Word, and other Office products. It is impossible to know what emails were open and they will all look read. At least Drafts you can go to the Drafts folder; there's no similar option for emails. It would be beneficial in recovering the items that you were working on when Outlook crashed and you can resume from the point it crashed rather than starting all over again(which is really frustrating). Also if I need to restart my computer for an update, I would like it if my open emails would save so that I could pick up where I left off after the restart.

61 comments
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John White commented
CRITICAL NEED Outlook 365 BRING BACK the /Restore switch that allows re-opening of emails that were open at the close of the last session !
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Alex Moss commented
Since recent updates in Outlook calendars were previously opened are not reopening automatically when we launch Outlook. Please can you give us an option to allow this.
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Anonymous commented
Not having the recovery option makes me regret switching from Gmail to Outlook & Office 365. Gmail would have saved my email as I'm writing it. But after writing more than a page and forgetting to save, outlook decided to close and restart. Nothing in my drafts folder, nothing recovered. I used to like outlook SMH...
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Sabrina commented
It is still not working for me!!! Can you let me know if we have to do something in Outlook to get this option??? It happened indeed that it did reopen the items after a crash but it's not systematic, no idea why.
But it would be really great indeed as I get sooooooo frustrated when losing the open emails... -
Anonymous commented
Thank you for creating the option to open emails when Outlook crashes.....SUPER helpful. HUGE Thank you, Microsoft. HUGE!!!!
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Anonymous commented
It works...it works. Finally, Microsoft made it so we can recover emails after a crash. HUGE thank you Microsoft. HUGE!!!!!
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Toby commented
same problem. Really? 4 years and not a single comment from Microsoft?
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Claudio Salerno commented
Many times Outlook needs to be restarted due to several reasons. I normally have several mail messages opened because they need later attention or action. When I restart Outlook, they just vanish, then I hace to dig back several days to find them and reopen them, if I get to remember which ones they were. It would be very useful that, as with browsers, messages that I had opened can be opened back when I restart Outlook
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Amy commented
Coming here looking if any way to recover a nearly complete but unsent e-mail when the computer froze & crashed. Looks like no luck. It's just gone... This would be a great feature to add. I'm not too worried about getting my open websites back. No work there - but it does that!
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Anonymous commented
Would be nice to have the ability to open last set of open e-mails when Outlook unexpectedly closes or when accidentally exiting outlook.
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Ankur commented
Hi Outlook team can you include a feature to restore the last opened emails in outlook everytime it restarts ? Like we have in google chrome for tabs.
Irreespective or crashed or no crash. The time one closes the outlook it shoudl remember the open emails tabs and when outlook restarts , start them again
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Harold commented
Reopen all opened email and unsaved/saved draft email after restart outlook.
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Ravi commented
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\OUTLOOK.EXE" /restore
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Karthic M commented
It will be very helpful/ improves productivity if outlook implements this feature. There are many scenarios when multiple email tabs opened (10 tabs) which we can't close without actioning, in case If laptop restarts due to pending updates or outlook crash after not responding. (If it happens, it will be a pain to find out which email was actioned and which is no, and there are many chances of missing important email to be actioned if an customer receives lot of emails a day).
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William Gu commented
It will definitely help when you have to restart your PC but you don't want to re-open the TO-DO mails one by one after the reboot(just a waste of time). Also, sometimes you just shut down Outlook by accident, or it just crashes. It's good to have this feature to do some damage control.
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Garwayne commented
I had like 10 e-mail queries opened and outlook closed out to update itself and all my e-mails closed as well.
And there is not option to recover the closed items. I really think its about time Microsoft develops something to address annoying features, as it impacts on productivity.
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N. Kritsotakis - Helios Pasta Ind. commented
There should be something like session manager, in order to open the last opened emails/tasks/contacts
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Anonymous commented
Open the outlook with all reading emails when the outlook was closed last time
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Kyle commented
When Outlook ends either planned or unplanned and is restarted, reopen all items that were open during the last session.
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Rob McGoldrick commented
@pharr74@hotmail.com , we are, it's the program that's not working correctly. I have mine to save every 3 minutes, the last email in my drafts is from earlier this month and it's only there because I manually saved the draft. I had a program update and lost some important emails I was working on. This is ridiculous.