Seeking missing Outlook folders

Using menus to move mail may be better than drag and drop

Q: I was organizing my email in Outlook and wanted to move some folders around. I dragged a folder and dropped it under another folder. Now, when I look in that folder, I don’t see the folder I moved, and I can’t seem to find it anywhere. Do you have any ideas what could have happened?

A: When using an application such as Outlook, it is a pretty simple task to move messages and message folders in much the same way as you move files and file folders in Explorer.

However, it doesn’t always work the way you want it to work.

Outlook is sometimes slow to respond, and it’s actually pretty easy to accidentally drop a message or a folder in the wrong place.

And depending on how much email you’re saving, it can be hard to locate the messages you moved if they didn’t end up where you intended.

When working with Outlook I tend to use the menus to move mail around. Rather than dragging and dropping, I right click the message or folder and select Move. Then I can choose the destination and let Outlook do the work without much worry that the messages will end up anywhere other than where I want them.

As to finding your missing messages, you will have to try to remember something about the messages such as the sender, the recipient, the subject or the content so you can use the search option in Outlook to try to find them.

In my experience, it is often easier to go to the web interface for your email and search there rather than in the Outlook application.

Q: I encrypted my personal laptop with Bitlocker, and now when it boots up, it is asking me for a recovery key. I don’t know what this is or where to find it. Can you point me in the right direction?

A: If the computer is a personal computer, you should be able to use another PC to sign in to your Microsoft account and retrieve your BitLocker recovery key. The direct link is account.microsoft.com/devices/recoverykey.

This will let you get signed back in to your encrypted computer.

If the computer is a business computer managed on a company domain, you will have to contact your admin for the key.

As a rule of thumb, I print a copy of my Bitlocker recover key for my work computer to a PDF file and save it in my cloud storage account. That way, I have access to it if I ever need it.