Disappearing emails

[#1]

All my emails but 10 have disappeared today, the 10th being the email from Plusnet as I just joined the Community.

I would really appreciate being told if there is a problem with my inbox.  I had some very important emails with holiday reference bookings and they are all gone - nothing beyond last Thursday 16 May.  I need my emails from April and on.

Can someone please reinstate my emails.  If there is a problem with too many emails I can delete others from other folders - I would very much appreciate some notice.

I look forward to hearing a response to this ASAP.

Thanks

Hazel

[#2]

Hello @Hazel74 and welcome to the forums!

Please accept my apologies for the issue with your emails.

After checking your account, I'm unable to see confirmation that your emails have been archived due to exceeding our 1GB storage limit. Have you set the emails up in an email client using a POP3 mail server? If you have, the emails may have been downloaded locally to this device and removed from the server.

Alternatively, you may have logged into webmail as the default mailbox rather than an additional mailbox. You can log into additional mailboxes with the username as yourusername+mailboxname (the mailbox name is the prefix to the @ symbol.)

If this is not the case, get back to us and we will try to restore a snap shot of these emails.

Thank you.

[#3]

Hi there,

Thanks for your message and suggestions – however I have changed nothing with the set up of my emails.

I just noticed today on the bus on the way home from work that I couldn’t see my emails on my mobile phone - only the 9 most recent ones.  I thought it must just be a temporary problem.  So I decided to log straight into mail on the Plusnet website when I got home, and right enough there were only 9 emails.  I should have a lot more than these. 

I would need my emails restored to the start of April this year please.

Thanks

Hazel Robertson

[#4]

You need to clarify which mail protocol you set up on your account as in post above.
if POP3 there will be no copies on PN's server, only on whichever of your devices d/loaded them.
If using IMAP protocol, e mails will stay on server, until YOU DELETE.

[#5]

Thanks again for the reply - I am very familiar with how POP3 and IMAP works. 

Up until yesterday I could see a copy of my emails in the email client on my phone, and a copy of them in my Plus Net emails too - unless I deleted them myself of course.

It was yesterday around 5pm I noticed that my emails were missing from the email client on my phone, all but 9 of them (as already described below).  These were the same 9 I could see on Plusnet Webmail.  Therefore I have a copy of my emails on my email client on my phone and the same as on Plusnet email.  So the rest of the emails were missing from my mobile phone email client, and also from Plusnet webmail.  POP3 has not downloaded them anywhere.  This is always the way the set up has been - emails visible on the email client on my mobile phone, and emails visible on Plusnet webmail.  Something happened yesterday and no emails backwards from 16 May are visible on either the mobile phone client or on Plusnet webmail..

I checked through the Trash on my mobile phone email client, and the only emails that were in the Trash were the ones I had put there myself.

I have read through the Community forum topics - there seem to be quite a few posts about people's emails disappearing without prior warning.

What is going on here?

Thanks.

[#6]

I've gone into the email settings now on my mobile phone, it is definitely set up as IMAP - so yes, should be copies on the server and on my phone, unless I delete.

[#7]

Hi Hazel.

We will only remove your mail from the server if you reach the storage limit.

We'll then just archive them and let you know via email before deleting them permanently.

Are your emails on any devices setup as POP3?

[#8]

On my laptop - but I have copies on my laptop and on my mobile phone client, they don't suddenly just vanish!  I have emails backdating months on my laptop and on my phone.  There is no reason for the ones on the phone to suddenly disappear all but 9.  I checked among the email setting on my mobile to see if I could find an archive, but nothing.  The only thing I can think is there is some default that deletes emails on my mobile, after a certain period, that I do not have access to.  The emails on my phone dated back to the start of April, which isn't long.

[#9]

Are you able to go into the email settings on your laptop?

It may be that this is automatically deleting mail either after a certain period, or once it grabs the mail from the server.

[#10]

I've not changed the settings on the email on my laptop, but will take a look and see what they are set to.

It doesn't make sense - the emails are all still on Outlook on my laptop, so there is no reason they should disappear from the mobile phone.  They were downloaded onto both the laptop and moible phone weeks ago - upto to 6-7 weeks ago, and are still on the laptop, so why should they disappear from the email app on my mobile?

The only reason I can think is that there has been some sort of update release to the app on my mobile phone - which pretty much makes my phone entirely unreliable, if it is going to be deleting emails 😞

[#11]

Thanks for getting back to us Hazel.

While I appreciate you've said you've not changed any settings it's possible as part of an update that has gone through that something may have changed. From what you've said that your mail is on your laptop but not other devices, with your laptop using POP3 and other devices using IMAP this appears to point to the laptop removing the mail from the server.

Let us know how it goes once you've checked Outlook out on your laptop.

[#12]

I doubt there has been any update to the email on my laptop - it is Microsoft Outlook 2007.

I will take a look at the settings.

Thanks.

[#13]

Let us know how it goes.

[#14]

I had a look through the settings, however can see nothing about emails being retained/deleted after a period of time.

Archive file and the only thing in there are a bunch of sent items from last year.  The emails that are missing from my mobile phone app are from the begining of April this year.  I don't really use Auto Archive, I have lots of folders which I file things in and every now and again delete things.

It just makes me wonder at what point this might happen again 😞  I cannot think it is the email set up on my laptop that has done this, my suspicions lie with the mobile since there are constant updates downloading.

Does Plusnet have a mobile app I can use instead of the one that came with my mobile phone?

[#15]

Thanks for the detail.

On Outlook 2007, could you go to Tools > Account Settings > Select your Plusnet email address > Change > More Settings > Advanced. From there you should see the following options:

• Leave a copy of messages on the server
• Remove from server after x days
• Remove from server when deleted from Deleted Items

Are any of those options ticked? Do you also mind me asking what mobile phone you have?