topic Re: Metronet inbox disappeared in Email

Metronet inbox disappeared

latchy9 — Sat, 30 Aug 2025 07:12:30 GMT

So, yesterday afternoon, my metronet inbox suddenly went from very full to nothing at all. No content on webmail either but sent items are still there.

Any ideas? (and no, I didn't delete them!)

Re: Metronet inbox disappeared

ChrisA1 — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 16:58:17 GMT

I have the same issue ... have you got to the bottom of it?

Re: Metronet inbox disappeared

RealAleMadrid — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 17:37:23 GMT

@ChrisA1 @latchy9 According to posts today at the end of this thread some Metronet Accounts have been migrated to Greenby.

https://community.plus.net/t5/Email/Plusnet-email-moving-to-Greenby/td-p/2005987/page/15

This may have something to do with your problems.🙄

Re: Metronet inbox disappeared

plusnettony — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 07:45:47 GMT

I'm unaware of any issues, but if you want to PM me your usernames, I will check further for you.

Out of interest, have you had confirmation from Greenby about your mail moving over to them?

Re: Metronet inbox disappeared

latchy9 — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 10:50:29 GMT

I'm using Outlook 2019 so apologies if this isn't your email client.

I looked for the .pst file, copied it to another location, renamed it to new.pst and then imported it back into outlook.

This recovered my emails but there was still a gap.

I installed Thunderbird and used that to connect to my account and it recovered all the emails.

Hope these work for you!

Re: Metronet inbox disappeared

Townman — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 11:11:41 GMT

This sounds rather convoluted and possibly suspect.

Is there an additional email client involved here configured as POP3? That is likely remove the content of the inbox ... whilst leaving the sent items folder untouched.

Your round the houses approach will have "restored" the server content by a 'push' from the client, which is not the same as a server recovery.

Re: Metronet inbox disappeared

latchy9 — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 11:56:33 GMT

I haven't used POP3 in years and I had no other email client so it's unlikely. I do accept your premise however as I can't think of any other way the webamail would be empty.

This was a 'desperation' option as it would at least get most emails back versus nothing at all.

Re: Metronet inbox disappeared

Townman — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 12:13:30 GMT

...unless the mail box was hacked and the content 'stolen'. You might want to consider changing the password.

Re: Metronet inbox disappeared

ChrisA1 — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 13:22:50 GMT

Sorry, this is all a bit technical for me.

First, how do I "PM" Plusnettony!

To clarify my position further ....

With Thunderbird on my laptop, the Sent folder is empty as well as the Inbox.

On my iPad, the Sent folder is still visible but the Inbox remains empty. An account error is showing which reads "Network error (POSIX 96)". It further states "The mail server - mail.metronet.co.uk" is not responding. Verify that you have entered the correct account info in Mail settings." But I have not changed any settings and everything has been working fine until a day or two ago.

I have had no notification from Greenby about being migrated ... but then I have not been able to pick up e mails for a couple of days!

Re: Metronet inbox disappeared

jab1 — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 13:30:16 GMT

@ChrisA1 wrote:

Sorry, this is all a bit technical for me.

First, how do I "PM" Plusnettony!

Click on his avatar - top left of his post, a new window will open with 'Send Private Message' in a box on the right.

Re: Metronet inbox disappeared

ChrisA1 — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 17:50:04 GMT

Right ... rants incoming ...
Rant 1: I have now managed to get in to webmail and can see there that I have in fact been migrated but the e mail informing me of this only arrived after my mail box had been emptied which was unhelpful ... and so much for the 30 / 60 day warnings.
Rant 2: I guess I am now in the capable(?) hands of Greenby but suffice to say that re-locating my e mails is proving to be a nightmare and is still to be resolved. Furthermore, I tried to pay the £15 for my "upgrade" and had two perfectly good card payments rejected by Greenby even though one has actually been charged to my bank account ... this too is still to be resolved.

As I say, I think the Plusnet community can do nothing more for me (please say if I am wrong) ... but hopefully this might be of assistance to others.

Re: Metronet inbox disappeared

Townman — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 21:40:04 GMT

The community can certainly learn from your experience.

I would suspect that you caught the migration in-flight. I do not know the micro details of the migration, but the following is probably reasonable …

You are with Plusnet all is fine
There Is an advance notice of migration
Your migration starts
Your emails are moved (over done period of time) from Plusnet to Greenby’s services
Your mailbox on the Plusnet service is gradually emptied
when it’s all done and dusted - an email is sent by Greenby
Finally the email server front ends are advised that the mail service has moved over

Until (7) happens the connecting clients continue to be routed to the Plusnet servers thereby there is some possibility of seeing empty folders.

@plusnettony is that a reasonable summary of the journey?

Re: Metronet inbox disappeared

plusnettony — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 07:07:24 GMT

Yes, that's a reasonable summary.

Re: Metronet inbox disappeared

Townman — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 07:50:16 GMT

In the SU discussion space, @MisterW has also reported third party experience of using mail service IMAP migration tools, which notes that after the migration has essentially completed, end user email clients can then take an age to resync folders, especially if they are large.

This might give the appearance of a mailbox being empty for a while. That reminded me of a large mailbox on some other platform taking hours to sync on an iPhone, when the account was added.

That took a lot of “don’t panic carry on” encouragement of the panicked user!

Re: Metronet inbox disappeared

MisterW — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 08:33:02 GMT

Your mailbox on the Plusnet service is gradually emptied

Surely , there's no need for it to be emptied UNTIL the migration is complete and the proxy is updated to map the account to Greenby ?

Re: Metronet inbox disappeared

latchy9 — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 12:26:35 GMT

I have to say that this has not been handled well by Greenby.

Sending you an email after the migration is pointless as enormous stress is created when your entire email history disappears for no apparent reason. It also means that time sensitive emails do not get answered in time.

Thanks to Tony and others for their assistance with this though. Your help is really appreciated.

BTW, I'm also finding that Greenby are struggling to accept a perfectly valid payment method. This doesn't bode well for future management of my email...

Re: Metronet inbox disappeared

Townman — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 14:03:30 GMT

@latchy9

I suggest that there is always going to be devil in the detail; I expect that Greenby do not have the contact details available to send a welcome email until after the migration.

The user experience raised in this thread (thanks to you and @ChrisA1 ) layer a real world user experience which is over and above the core of the migration process. I do wonder if you had logged into the mailbox using webmail that all would be as might be reasonably expected of the migration process, in that all of your email was there and accessible by the 'in house' IMAP email client.

How an individual user's chosen IMAP email client handles its re-synch with the server is outside of the scope of the actual migration; that said sharing the experience and determining potential causes of it will be beneficial to those who follow you. SU research and discussion has brought about this - https://community.plus.net/t5/Email/Greenby-transfer-IMAP-users/m-p/2019074#M52385 - prompt post from the business.

Like yourself, it was not the first possibility I had considered, but having thought about it, I realise that I have seen the same on multiple occasions ... even where nothing has changed at all, particularly with iOS email. It can cause panic; though if the email is found to be there when accessing the mailbox via webmail, it is simply a matter of waiting for client and (the new) server to get back in step ... as you have observed.

Thank you for sharing your experience and the consequential contribution to community knowledge. For you it is over to Greenby and thanks for all the fish! 🐠 🐡 🐟

Moderator's note:
Typos corrected as requested by OP

Re: Metronet inbox disappeared

plusnettony — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 13:01:00 GMT

> BTW, I'm also finding that Greenby are struggling to accept a perfectly valid payment method.

A couple of people have mentioned this, so I've raised it to Greenby for you.

Re: Metronet inbox disappeared

latchy9 — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 13:13:13 GMT

As someone with 40 (yes 40!) years of experience in IT infrastructure, the golden rule of migrations is that you do them outside of core hours!

I can't believe that it's beyond Greenby to schedule this work for the early hours when most (I accept not all) users will not be accessing their email.

Greenby are already months behind schedule so the extra time that this might add is hardly going to be material.

I know you guys aren't Greenby but it really gets my goat when I'm the recipient of poor service because others cannot plan properly.

Re: Metronet inbox disappeared

ChrisA1 — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 17:13:07 GMT

I think what Townman says is correct ... the truth of it is that I rarely used Plusnet webmail.

Re Plusnettony's latest post, despite saying that my offers of payment were unacceptable at the time, my Greenby dashboard now shows my upgrade charge of £15 as having been paid. Hey-ho!

Finally, I do have one ongoing issue which I hope that Greenby will be able to resolve: although my Inbox has "reappeared" fully in tact, I am still not able to access any of my folders of saved e mails ... which is a significant worry.