Outlook text draft disappeared when changing the From address

Martin 1 Reputation point
2021-02-23T20:54:00.413+00:00

Outlook 2013

I was working on a draft e-mail for over an hour when suddenly all my text disappeared when I changed the "From" address in the email window. I have both my work and my private mailbox connected to Outlook and when I noticed my work e-mail was selected in the From field, I changed it to my private email address. As soon as I made that change, all text disappeared in my draft email. I did CTRL+Z, switched back to my work email again, but nothing helped. The text just disappeared.
How do I get this back? I really don't want to start from scratch again and it makes absolutely zero sense that text just disappears like that by only changing the From address.

Outlook Management
Outlook Management
Outlook: A family of Microsoft email and calendar products.Management: The act or process of organizing, handling, directing or controlling something.
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  1. JeffYang-MSFT 6,241 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor
    2021-02-24T03:17:52.06+00:00

    Hi @Martin ,

    Sorry for the inconvenience that Outlook brought to you.

    Based on my experience, email messages like this usually will be automatically saved to your Drafts folder, please check your Drafts folder or try Outlook search within your whole mailbox to see if we could find it.

    Also, if you are using IMAP or Exchange email account, checking your web mail is an indispensable step as well. If the issue still continues, I'm afraid that those content you typed might not be able to be recovered.

    About this text draft disappeared issue, could you still reproduce this issue in tests email messages? Or just happened randomly? I tested a lot in my Outlook 2013 (15.0.5285.1000) but could not reproduce it.

    In order to avoid similar problems as much as possible, please try the following suggestions:

    • To ensure that the Outlook client functions can work normally, please try to repair your Office program.
    • And what's the version of your Outlook 2013? (File > Office Account > About Outlook). Please make sure you have upgraded your Outlook and Windows to the latest version.
    • Corrupted email template might cause issues like this as well. Please try to exit your Outlook and remove the email template file(NormalEmail.dotm, Normal.dotm), then restart your Outlook client to see if it could be better.
      File location: C:\Users#Users#\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates

    Hope this can be helpful.

    If an Answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and upvote it.
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  2. Chris Burrows 1 Reputation point
    2021-09-24T00:10:24.99+00:00

    This problem has bugged me for years but only just got around to finding out how to fix it.

    It is because there isn't a default signature defined for the first email account that is being used. Outlook thinks you are typing a signature, not a message, for the first email account and replaces it with the signature for the second email account when you switch accounts! I found the solution here:

    https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/stop-outlook-from-deleting-content-of-emails-when/89fb3f00-8cb3-4f5c-ac9d-e9c6139a913e

    Cheers,
    Chris Burrows
    CFB Software
    https://www.cfbsoftware.com

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  3. Max Fury 151 Reputation points
    2021-09-28T04:36:22.57+00:00

    Hi,
    If the email you're working on abruptly disappears then you have to try this once: Enter CTRL + Z to "Undu" emails. Check your drafts folder. Restart the browser and then check the drafts folder again. This problem also may occur due to other reasons so you have to find out if this method nor working.

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