Client has an ISP mailbox which had previously been accessed through Outlook running on XP and also through a webmail facility (which leaves the mail on the ISP server).

When SBS2003 was installed on the client's new Dell PowerEdge server, we set Outlook Exchange to download mail from the client's ISP account every 15 minutes.

A single user-account was setup on SBS2003 (including the e-mail account on SBS2003).

We know that there was mail on the ISP account, as it had been viewed through the webmail access; we also know that it was collected by Exchange on the new Dell server, as it disappeared from the ISP mail's Inbox.

This bit appears to be significant (so let me lable this as reference point 'A').

Outlook client was 'not' run on any laptop or PC on the new LAN so any mail collected from the ISP's server should have been loaded into SBS2003's Exchange.

At this point (over a weekend) something appears to have been done, I'm not sure exactly what, that seems to have dis-associated the SBS user-name from its client device.

The simplest solution to re-associate them appeared to be to simply delete the user and re-add.

This was done on the Monday morning, when I returned to the customer site.

After the user was re-created, Outlook was run on the client laptop from the SBS2003 LAN and e-mails were successfully transferred from the ISP account through Outlook Exchange on the Dell Server and onto the client's Outlook mailbox.

However, the only emails that were delivered were those that had arrived in the ISP mailbox 'after' the ones that had been viewed from the ISP's webmail (ie, those delivered to the ISP mailbox after reference point 'A' mentioned above).

About 8 or 10 messages appear not to have been delivered (specifically, those that had arrived on the ISP server before reference point 'A', but which Exchange, running on SBS2003, had picked up).

I suspect that they are in the Exchange database, but labled to the original 'user' not the new 'user'.

We did try creating another fictitious user (Joe Bloggs) on SBS2003 and tried to reconnect the old mail file; but an error is generated saying that the GUID is already associated with the other (real) 'user'.

Suspect that one solution would be to delete the real 'user' (which is the same as the original user that was setup) and then reconnect the old file to 'Joe Bloggs'.

However, the customer is a bit worried that we might be digging ourselves into a bigger problem (and I can't guarantee that this would not be the case).

If it is possible, I would like to try and recover the missing messages; so would appreciate any advice or suggestions that may be available.