If you recalled my post from a few days ago where I have a folder which mysteriously became “invisible”, well there is a fix! Thanks to some of my friends at the mother ship (read Microsoft) in helping out with this – they know who they are and do not need to be named here. 
One thing before you continue to the steps below, ensure you are connected to Exchange and logged in to Outlook. As always you can click on the images to see them in full size.
- Download MfcMapi – also known as the Microsoft Exchange Server MAPI Editor. If you are like and never heard of this tool it is very impressive. I think the Exchange support guys use this and is fairly well known by then.
- From the ‘Session’ menu, choose Logon and ‘Display Store Table’.
- You will be asked to pick a profile first.
- Double-click the store that contains the hidden folder. In my case this store was Exchange and you can see I have the “Mailbox – Amit Bahree” store selected.
- Expand the ‘Root Container’ of the store, navigate to the hidden folder and select it. Please note that your visible folder hierarchy is contained in a sub-folder of the ‘Root Container’ that is likely named ‘IPM_SUBTREE’ or ‘Top of Information Store’. This again in my case is “Gadgets”.
- Right-click the PR_ATTR_HIDDEN (tag 0x10F4000B) property in the property list of the hidden folder and choose ‘Edit Property’ from the menu.
- Disable the ‘Boolean’ check box and press OK.
- Select File | Exit to close the current window. From the Main window, select ‘Logoff’ from the ‘Session’ menu, and then Exit MFCMapi.
There is also a KB Article (924226) from Microsoft which seems to be similar, although that talks about Contacts specifically the steps are the same. The cause as per the KB article is the improperly formatting the Provisioning registry keys for OWA on the Back-End (mailbox) Exchange Server.
January 10th, 2011 5:27 pm
Per Rishi at Microsoft
Agreement of Issue: Unable to see default folders in Outlook 2010.
Action: You were trying to see default e-mail folder.
Result: You were not able to see that.
Cause: As those folders were hidden and were unsubscribed at gmail server.
Resolution: We took control of your desktop. We went to Folders tab > Purge > Purge options > More Folders Button > Selected Gmail / Spam > Uncheck always show subscribed folders in hierarchy of folders in Outlook 2010> Clicked apply and ok button. We did restart Outlook 2010 and we checked and found Spam folder there with all e-mails.
January 30th, 2011 11:04 am
Thanks a Lot …… The post helped me a Lot…..Thank you very much again
April 12th, 2011 6:26 am
This worked great. Greetings from Vienna. MICROSOFT TECH SERVICE is also relating to this website… :=)))))
June 2nd, 2011 1:14 pm
this was of great help to me, i was working on users issue and doing scanost didnt help thought it was showing the folder there in the list of scanost.
I have seen issue where emails in one particular folder are not visible, probably caused because of sync failure between Exchange and outlook, which used to get resolved with 2 steps to me(either one of them).
1. Run scanost and repair that folder,outlook 2010 does not have, but configure the profile on outlook2007 and do it, it works fine.
2. Move users mailbox to any other store.
But this one didnt work, finally i found this article and case solved.
Only thing I would like to post here is that one strange thing that we noticed, that particular folder was visible when user checked his email using Outlook web access using Google Chrome.
Thought this might help someone who cannot see the folder in owa using IE or outlook, then they can check Chrome.
June 2nd, 2011 1:34 pm
Am glad this of of help; the behaviour using Chrome is interesting and I am sure would be helpful for someone else.
November 17th, 2011 8:52 pm
Worked perfect, saved a lot of time and trouble, many thanks. Matthias
January 11th, 2012 8:49 am
Thanks, worked like a charm!
January 13th, 2012 5:22 am
It worked great!!! Excellent post.
February 9th, 2012 8:41 pm
Need assistance please…. I’ve had a user download and run this awesome program and we were able to see his missing fOutlook folders however, the PR_ATTR_HIDDEN item is not showing up in the right-hand window. Can anyone please advise as to why this could be. Did we do anything wrong…? Thank you very much…!
February 10th, 2012 4:42 am
Hi Mike, the only thing I can think of is in Step 5, was the correct folder picked?
February 10th, 2012 8:49 pm
Amit, thank you for the reply – yes, I was remoted into his computer at the time and he did choose the correct folder. We tried baking all the way out and trying again but received the same results. No sure why this is happening. He can actually see the folders that for some reason dod not show back up in the one single Outlook pst file that I had to move for him after I walked him through doing the upgrade from Office 2007 to Office 2010.
April 7th, 2012 10:55 am
Dear Amit Bahree
very useful post it works great also for me!!!
My “Sent” folder disappeared 10 dasys ago from my Mailbox folder list and our exchange expert were not able to find it…
They only explained to me that was moved to the “RSS feeds” folder (for mistake) and for that reason was hidden. Is that a possible explanation? Do you think is possible that I can unvoluntary hidden a folder in the mailbox?
Many thanks again.
Tiziano
April 27th, 2012 9:45 am
Great solution, as admin I never encountered this problem before, I could not find the cause but the solution is great.
I still have to sort out the cause though,
thanks,
rob lirb
May 5th, 2012 11:29 pm
I am on Outlook 2010 and accidentally deleted one of the Outlook folders.
Using the MAPI editor was able to find the folder in the deleted Items. However, cannot find the PR_ATTR_HIDDEN property.
The only boolean property I see is PR_SUBFOLDERS.
Is there another property I need to edit?
thanks
mbhatia
May 5th, 2012 11:34 pm
Just figured a solution differently.
You can right click on the folder – copy – and then right click on the destination folder and Paste.
It gives you an option to move the subfolders or just the content. Used the Move Folder option and it worked great.
Thanks again for a great tip.
mbhatia
May 9th, 2012 4:02 pm
My Inbox disappeared and this worked great. Thanks