I have a weird problem which does not make sense at all and I am hoping it is something stupid on my end.

One of my folders called “Gadgets” which resides in Community \ Social folder structure has somehow become invisible. I know the folder is present because I can still see my un-read emails (via the Unread Email Search Folders). Also if I search for emails in that folder I can find the emails, but I cannot see the folder in my list and as a result any of the emails in that. I tried creating it again but I get the error saying the folder exists. (See the various screen shots below).

Also it does not matter if I am using Outlook for this or I am connected to OWA – it is the same behavior.

The question is how do I get this back? Has anyone else seen this? A few things to note:

  • I am on Exchange 12 a.k.a Exchange 2007 and the client is Outlook 2007 running on Vista x64 (RTM).
  • Everything was fine and I just started getting this, so I know this is something new. Also I have been on Exchange 12 for a very long time now so unless something has crapped out very recently this is something else.
  • This is not an Outlook problem as I can reproduce the same issue on OWA (though I don’t have screenshots for it below).

Note: you can click on most images below to see them in detail.

<p> <img src="images/clip_image0021.jpg" alt=""/> </p>

Figure 1: Missing “Gadgets” folder from the above list.

<p> <img src="images/clip_image004_thumb5.jpg" alt=""/> </p>

Figure 2: This shows that I have unread items in that folder (which I cannot find) and when I open that I read that folder just fine!

<p> <img src="images/clip_image006_thumb3.jpg" alt=""/> </p>

Figure 3: This shows that when I search for something in that folder (even when it is read) it does work and I can again have full functionality.

<p> <img src="images/clip_image008_thumb4.jpg" alt=""/> </p>

Figure 4: I try creating the folder called Gadgets under the Social folder and I get the error shown in the next figure.

<p> <img src="images/clip_image010_thumb.jpg" alt=""/> </p>

Figure 5: Error when adding folder.

This is quite irritating and I am at my wits end – any help is highly appreciated!