Archived mailbox? Request for it to be unarchived here!

[#1]

Dear Plusnet, After having had my emails dearchived recently (for which, THANK YOU. That was a scary day!) I have now deleted several thousand emails. Can I be sure that I am now within the permitted mailbox size and therefore not at risk of further archiving? Incidentally, I am someone who thought that by simply deleting an email, it was gone. My son has now talked me through the removal process but I can't be the only twit to have thought this. Having been born before computers were in every house, I feel that I am supposed to absorb IT info by osmosis. An idiot guide (maybe named 'basic guide' so as not to offend...though we all know who we are) would be useful for some of us...?

[#2]

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@TheMotherShip1 wrote:

I am someone who thought that by simply deleting an email, it was gone. My son has now talked me through the removal process but I can't be the only twit to have thought this.

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Generally speaking, when you delete something, it is gone ... eventually.  However that can depend on the settings of your email client and (more importantly) the behaviour of your email client.  How email works, is not really a function of the email service, but it is very much that of the email application you chose to use.

With a "properly" functioning IMAP email client, when you "delete" an email, it is MOVED to the deleted items folder.  If your client is not configured to "empty the deleted items folder on exit" (or you never shut it down) then the emails will just sit there in the deleted items folder until some action deletes them entirely.  Plusnet runs weekly house keeping which will clean out the deleted items folder of items deleted more than a week ago.  Therefore with a "working as reasonably expected" IMAP email client, deleting an email will remove it from your mail store entirely not later than 8 days hence.

Unfortunately, not all IMAP email clients were created equally and some manage item deletion differently, even varying by different versions of the same product.  Some simply MARK items as deleted (they might be greyed out or scored out) but they are NOT MOVED from the inbox NOR DELETED.  Then depending on how that client works, they might not be displayed at all when the folder view is refreshed, leading to the belief that they are gone, even though they are still there.  Outlook used to work like this before OL2016.  To actually DELETE those items the email folders need to be compacted, also known a purging.

POP3 email clients can be even more complex.  In "native" mode, POP3 clients should DOWNLOAD email items and then REMOVE them from the server, so that the server's storage allowance is never exceeded.  When items are then deleted, that happens locally and what happens there ... is what happens, but has no bearing on the server.  However, POP3 clients can be instructed to leave items it has downloaded, on the server.  In that scenario when an item is deleted (locally) as above, it might be a bit of a lottery as to what happens with the copy it left on the server.  There is therefore some risk that the server could be filling up without the user being aware.

Given that the operation of email is very much dependent on the characteristic of a user's own email client, it becomes not such a straightforward task for an email supplier to write an operational guide ... idiots' or otherwise!

Indeed you are not the first and will not be that last to believe that they do not have that much mail ... well at least in the INBOX.  Items in the SENT and DELETED (trash) folders also count towards the storage utilisation.  So very often it is the SENT ITEMS folder which never gets looked at ... which if one uses email to share photos is all too often the culprit for exceeding the Fair Usage Policy.

[#3]

Thank you, Townman, you superuser, you. Well, I understand some of that (I am more of an IT idiot than you think...but could read you a sonnet or bake you a scone. Each to their own) I hadn't thought about the 'sent' items and photographs so will tackle that now. 

[#4]

Home made scones are the best!

Glad that helped at least a little.  Some of this stuff is not easy to explain.

[#5]

Hi, I would like to request my mailbox be unarchived please. Kind regards.

[#6]

Hiya @bmunsco, thanks for getting in touch.

I've had a check and I'm not seeing that we have archived your mail? Can you advise if you have received a notification to say it has been archived due to inactivity?

[#7]

I have successfully logged in to my plusnet mail only account and was immediately directed to to the email set up page. I have set up the 3 email addresses using the original passwords. I and received the emails to my non-plusnet address confirming that they have been set up and saying one said it would be 4 hours before they were ready the other 2 said 30mins.

I have waited 4.5 hours but am getting server errors when trying to send/receive in Outlook and all my mail in the 3 mailboxes has disappeared from Outlook and my iPhone. I have checked the the set up pages and see the outgoing server is showing as stmp.plus.net instead of relay.plus.net. I have tried to rectify this but am not able to save the changes because the connection to the imap server is being dropped. I also keep getting the pop ups about the passwords suggesting they are not being recognised.

Any advice/help would be gratefully received.

[#8]

Hi Lauren

Yes, received notification that all e-mails were archived due to inactivity for three months on this e-mail account. Is it possible to reinstate?

Any help appreciated please.

[#9]

Hi @bmunsco,

I'm afraid that I can't located an email archive notification on your account - do you have more than one account with us? If so, please could you send me a private message with the secondary mail accounts' username included? Please make sure to also include a link to this thread in case one of my colleagues pick the message up before me

Hi @LoneBee,

Just to clarify, when you say you've lost the emails in Outlook and on the iPhone, is that a different device's Outlook?

[#10]

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@TheMightyAJ wrote:

Hi @bmunsco,

I'm afraid that I can't located an email archive notification on your account

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For a mailbox archived due to non-use there will be no archive notification on the account.  That archive process does not leave any finger print in the ticket system.

@bmunsco wrote:
Yes, received notification that all e-mails were archived due to inactivity for three months on this e-mail account

[#11]

No I am using iPhone mail app on the phone. Some new emails have arrived on the iphone but all old ones have disappeared. With respect to Outlook on my laptop some recent emails have arrived in i**c and l**l mailboxes but not l**e (I deleted this account and tried to set up again but am getting “The server responded: 550 <[email address] when trying to send test message. All the old emails disappeared yesterday. I hope that helps.

[#12]

Can @LoneBee 's issue and discussion please be kept on their own thread here - Re: Email only account - Page 2 - Plusnet Community

[#13]

@Townman, good spot! I clearly hadn't had my morning coffee just yet when reading this before @bmunsco, so sorry for any confusion there

I can put through a request to retrieve the mailboxes from archival, however the success of this will depend on when they were initially archived. Do you happen to remember when this occurred?

[#14]

Hi again,

My daughters emails were restored yesterday (thanks for that) - I've just received one of your automatic emails about the account being too large.  I won't be able to see her for two week to sort out an archiving scheme for her as she's working - can you ask your tech team to give me 3 weeks or so to sort her out.

BTW I've just tried to use your webmail function to check the size of my wife's email account and it just doesn't work - it just gives an error after 30 seconds so it's impossible to check what effect deleting / archiving material has had.

I intend making a new data file on her laptop and copying the older files over - I presume this will suffice to drop the size count ?

Regards

[#15]

Hi @Dinalt

I'm afraid we can't delay or stop the unarchiving process as it's automated, but feel free to let us know if we archive the emails before you've had a chance to do some housekeeping and we'll be happy to unarchive them. 

As far as I'm aware the check mailbox function in webmail and also our side can error out if the mailbox is quite big, but it should work once you've cleared some mail out of the mailbox.