board77

Don't know if this is the place, but here it is anyway.

I recently discovered that a year's worth of emails in my "inbox" are gone. From 4 April 2006 to 29 May 2007, everything gone. How? I don't understand this. I most certainly did not purposely delete these emails! And all the other ones are still there, going back to November of 2000.

They are not, of course, in the "delete" basket, since I routinely chuck spammy things in there and delete the contents of the delete basket, and if those emails somehow got in there, I guess I sent them away. But how, when, or why the would have got in there, I don't know. Over a thousand emails, by my estimate.

If I was a dodgy politician and the FBI got hold of my computer, they could find them, right?

Is there anything I can do?

Is this online mail, or desktop mail?

If desktop, what program do you use?

If online, which provider?

Yeah, some providers will delete old emails after so long. You have to put them into personal folders if you want to keep them after the specified time period. Or you can use Outlook on your computer to keep them.

As for if there's anything to do now, I have no clue.

For the future, I put emails I want to keep indefinitely into different folders I've created (personal, homeschool, music ministry, etc.).

Sorry!

Lali

I would contact your provider immediately. It may be that they have something like a Recycle Bin, where "deleted" messages are stored for a time until they are deleted for real. You won't know until you ask!

My email is Outlook Express, my provider is Shaw. I will see if they have any suggestions.

I don't think they have any policy about old emails, as I say, every email I ever got since November of 2000 is still there, just this one missing year.

Bizarre.

It doesn't really matter, I suppose, but it bugs me.

If you're using Outlook on your own computer, then it can't be the provider. They don't have access to your computer.

Or is this just some setup I've never heard of? (could be...) But as far as I know, once you download stuff to Outlook, it's just data on your PC. The provider has nothing to do with it. So it has to be something on your computer, some messup on the program's part.

I don't have a PC with Outlook handy to check but I'm almost sure it has to save each message in its own format in a folder somewhere in its program files...I wonder if it would be possible to check if the missing messages are there- if what I'm imagining is correct then it could either be that Outlook lost the emails altogether, or that it has a glitch in its database and just can't access them.

Sorry I can't be more specific, but maybe someone else could pick up that idea?

Are you allowing Outlook to Auto-archive?

I set up Outlook to leave my messages on the server. (I don't like using Outlook and only use it when I have problems accessing my email through the normal routes.) But that takes a lot of hoop-jumping to get Outlook to do that. I'm not sure how vison has hers set up. ???


Lali

I have no clue. I have an email button and when I click on it, Outlook Express opens. That's my "setup". You must understand that I know NOTHING of these matters!!!!

When I open it, which I just did, I had 8 new emails, 7 of which I deleted without opening since 6 of the 7 were "read receipts" for some business emails I sent and the other one was obviously spam. So that left me one to open, a letter from a friend. Actually, from the friend whose email is the 3rd one I EVER got, back in November of 2000, and that email is still there in my Inbox.

Don't ask me. When my Rob is here next I will get him to scope it all out. In the meantime, I will assume those emails are gone forever.