and, i think i figured out how to recover my deleted email, too.

so, what i have is three giant pst files, although i think there's mostly overlap. when you clear the deleted items folder, the data stays in the pst file until you "compact " it, which is something i did not do. the one at 1.9 gb reads about 35,000 emails but there some to be a large amount of inaccessible emails; i know there's 60,000 inaccessible emails in the 1.4 gb one from analyzing it with a commercial software that i couldn't find a key for, and i can't read anything at all with this one in outlook. i also have a 2.4 gb past file that is full of already deleted items that cannot be accessed at all. 

when i was trying to figure this out last week, the first thing i tried was to delete the index file using a hex editor, but i'm realizing i did it wrong. i actually deleted it outright; i should have zeroed it out. i guess that makes more sense, but you follow instructions when you're doing this kind of thing, and the hack said to delete it - so that's what i did. i've gone back and zeroed out the 1.4 one and it's picking up about 37,000 emails, which seems partial, but it's a start.