E-Mail Folders Have Been Emptied

[#1]

Hello,

I have been directed here by the automated service because of the Coronavirus impact on telephone support.

My problem is that yesterday evening I found that, for one of my e-mail addresses, almost every folder had been emptied of the stored e-mails. The folder structure still exists but 90% report no mails within. The Inbox still had the anticipated messages in it and was functioning normally.

I am sure that I have not deleted them by mistake.

My other two e-mail addresses are fine, at this point in time.

As far as I was aware, I was under the 1Gb limit so I do not understand what has happened.

Does PlusNet have some backup or archive that can be restored so I can at least save the emails that have a sentimental value to another medium?

Thanks.

Alex

[#2]

Hello Alex,

There's a rabbit away here.. all my folder structures disappeared.

I think all my messages are now in the root and so takes an eon (if at all) to load in webmail and in 'basic' squirrel i see:

Previous | Next | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 40 41 42 43 | Show All | Toggle All

Viewing Messages: 1 to 15 (634 total)

ERROR: Connection dropped by IMAP server.
Query: LIST "" "INBOX"

[#3]

My wife has a similar problem. All her read emails in the Inbox have disappeared but she has not deleted anything. She did have some recent issues with Server Error messages appearing when she tried to access her email. but these have now stopped.

We are unable to access Plusnet help, either via the the Chat tool or by phone, and the only suggestion is to raise this via the community. Judging by this thread, this seems to be an issue common to Plusnet Webmail users. I don't use it myself, but i can't see how a user can archive emails they want to keep without leaving them on the server. Does anyone know how to do this?

[#4]

It is strange.  My folder structure is still there but almost all the folders are reporting "Folder is empty" when I click on them. 

Three of my folders show me a few messages but not as many as I know there should be.

My Inbox appears to be functioning correctly with just 56 messages in it.

Frustratingly, one of the folders contained messages exchanged with a relative now recently deceased and have some sentimental value. I should have saved them to another medium under my control!

Regards

Alex

[#5]

I think it might be an imap folder subscription issue.. in desktop outlook if I right clicked on inbox I could see the folders... The "don't show unsubscribed folders" box was ticked.. unticking the box showed the folders! Bear in mind I hadn't unsubscribed anything in outlook.. in plusnet webmail I still couldn't see any folders.

I have today moved my email to exchange online... Much better... Own domains mx'd to it, much better web client etc., etc.

I'd been thinking of doing it for a while.. this pushed me.

[#6]

It would be helpful if the "me too" posters started their own threads if the still have a problem.

@Romftoff 

Do you still have a problem?

If yes, how are you accessing email?  Outlook (version) or Webmail?  If Outlook, what do the folders look like if access via Webmail?

[#7]

Hi Simon,

Unfortunately, I have no problem seeing the folders. They are currently showing "empty".  All the e-mails I had stored in them have gone.

Regards

Alex.

[#8]

Hi Townman,

I still have the problem.

I accessed my e-mail inbox from an iPad, Android phone (G Mail) or Windows 10 laptop using Windows Mail.

I would delete unwanted messages from my Inbox using any of the devices but would transfer messages that I wanted to keep from the Inbox to Storage folders periodically using Windows Mail on the laptop but it was set up sync with PlusNet's Webmail server.

I would only access PlusNet's WebMail application occasionally if I didn't have my devices handy and was using a friend's computer.

One day, the folders were all there with messages in them. The following day, I went in to a folder to view a message that I knew was there and it was completely empty.  A check of the other storage folders revealed the same although my Inbox did not seem to be affected.

It has me baffled.

Regards

Alex.

[#9]

Hi Alex,

This sounds a little convoluted, so I need to ask some clarifying questions, so as to determine if this is an email server content issue or an email client sync issue.

Is this a plusnet.com email address (as opposed to any of the legacy ISPs)?

If you log into the email account using WEBMAIL are there any emails in the folders where you expect to see them?

Is the email account in question the Plusnet default email address?

If not can you please check the default email address and look for emails advising that you have exceeded the email fair use policy (FUP) limits?

The above will clarify if your email storage has been archived due to exceeding the FUP and that possibly you have missed the weeks of warning emails by not using (checking) the default email address.

[#10]

Hi Townman,

Sorry for the delay inn getting back to you .

It is a "plus.com" email address.

When I log in using WebMail there are e-mails in my InBox, Sent and deleted items that I would expect to be there.

There are two folders I created which have some, but not all, of the messages I was storing still in them.

The other folders I had created have been completely emptied.

The e-mail account is not the primary but there has definitely been no e-mails about exceeding the fair use policy. The primary email address is used and monitored regularly and it has not experienced the same problem.  I did receive one of those emails about three years ago and discovered it was because my deleted items folder hadn't been emptying properly.  It made me aware of the limits and I do periodically check that my email accounts are within the set limits.

Regards

Alex

[#11]

Hi Alex,

"Not the primary" does this imply that this is a mailbox not often accessed?

Email archiving

Plusnet has two email content archiving 'events'

1. Exceeding the Fair Usage Policy (FUP): This is invoked when the sum of the contents of all of your email boxes exceeds the 1GB FUP allowance. Users will have received warning notices for several weeks, having exceeded 75% of the FUP. After 2 warnings of having exceeded 100% of the FUP, mailboxes are archived to bring the FUP utilisation down below 100%. The act of archiving emails is recorded in the user's ticket history - see the PN tickets link below
2. Mailbox not accessed for a while: After a period of not accessing a mailbox (it not being logged into) the contents are archived. An email is sent to that mailbox advising of the archiving action, after it has been archived. No record of the action is recorded in the ticket history

Archives are retained for 30 days. When making a request to unarchive emails, it is very helpful to inform staff which of the above archives appears to have been performed - it stops them looking for non-existent tickets!

[#12]

Hi Townman,

The email address is used pretty much on a daily basis and is usually accessed by the mail program on an iPad. I very seldom access it via the Webmail in a browser.

I was completely unaware of the “inactive” archiving policy. The iPad was set up for imap on incoming mail and relay for outgoing mail so would that be viewed as activity for the purpose of “accessing” in terms of the policy.

If it did not count as activity, I certainly did not see an email warning me that this was going to happen as I would have simply gone into webmail to reset the counter.

What I found strange was that, if it was an archiving, it was not an “”all or nothing”. There were the two personal folders with some messages left in them and a dozen or so that were completely emptied. The “standard” folders for inbox, sent, deleted, junk appeared unaffected. 

I couldn’t have deleted them accidentally so I had wondered if there had been an electronic glitch that had done some damage to a drive and if there had been a “backup” drive that would have still had data on it. As time goes on I realise that is less and less likely as a recovery option.

The salient lesson for me is that I should have been backing up my saved messages somehow to a secondary storage. I do it with photographs and a variety of other documents routinely having suffered hard drive failures in the past but never considered it for email since it was all online on someone else’s servers and somehow seemed “safe”

Regards

Alex

[#13]

@Gandalf - I know you are all up to your necks in alligators ... is there any possibility of a partial restore being done from a past back up here please?

[#14]

I'm sorry to see you've not had a response to this @Romftoff 

While I can't actually see anything confirming that emails on your account have been archived recently, I've submitted the unarchive request to try and restore emails if they've been archived and the account is missing the confirmation for some reason.

The requests are processed in a batch, every 30 minutes. Please note it may take some time to restore the mail, especially if the mailbox was very large.

I hope this helps.