Sorry i can't help further. Even if using POP if you ticked the box
"keep on server " you should just be able to do a fresh install of
Outlook and it'll download all emails. I gave up on windows two years
ago now. Even so just to keep a copy of your emails use the
ImportExportTools addon/plugin and you have a t least a copy. Looking
at your last message i see you use gmail so why not just use IMAP. I
thought without checking you used a provider that didn't offer IMAP -
if you'd used that email address for a good while you wouldn't want to
change perhaps.

IMAP is the way to go to be honest.

When i changed to googlemail two years ago i decided to use google on
webmail and just use TB to download and archive using
ImportExportTools. Mainly because as a teacher i was reading email on
a school machine or on one of my two at home.

Just recently due to the volume of email i've decided to go back to
TB. The amount of time it takes doing the bottom posting and editing
messages has led me to find out if it's possible to use an external
editor like Joe or Vim to edit emails to save time. It is and i'll be
doing a post in case anyone else is interested later this w/e.