I use the Windows Live Mail 2012 interface for my Outlook account.

I retain selected undeleted older mail in a series of folders some labeled "2008 Keep", "2009 Keep", "2010 Keep", "2011 Keep", "2011 recover", "2012 Current", "2013 CURRENT", and other various named folders.  I wanted to correct the name of the "2012 Current" folder to "2012 Keep".  I also tried to move some messages to its correctly named folder.

It is possible that I may have acted before all messages were moved, but in the process of dragging a folder I inadvertently dropped it and created a subfolder. I do not recall the subsequent sequence of actions, but I did delete a folder after dragging the contents to another folder and verifying that the incorrect folder was empty.

Now I see that I have lost the folder named 2012 Keep with all its contents.  The folder existed earlier today, and it contained messages received in 2012.

Interestingly, on a laptop which I disconnected from the network before starting I have all the 2012 Keep folder with contents with contacts apparently intact as it was used and updated a few days ago.  I somehow have to restore the recent folder contents back to the Outlook server or possibly transfer the from my laptop back to the server in some way without corrupting the send dates.