How long to restore archived emails?

[#1]

Another user here who has had his emails archived as what I thought was an empty "deleted" folder was not. I was in touch on the phone with PN 4 days ago & was told that emails would be restored within 2 days; no sign as yet, how long have people found they have to wait before restoration?

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Hello @nigelk,

Thanks for getting in touch and we are sorry for the delay in underachieving you mail. We have sent the request now and this will complete within the next 30 minutes. 

When they have returned we would advise to remove any unwanted mail to reduce the size of your mail box and prevent further archiving.

Please let us know how you get on.

[#3]

Yes, they are back, thank you.

The underlying problem, which I have had before and discussed with Plus Net, is that even though I empty both the Trash and Deleted folders on webmail, the PN server does not seem to recognise the emptying. So I am left with PN reporting I have exceeded my allowance but I have no way of clearing the trash. Is there a way of getting the plus net server to recognise when I have emptied my unwanted emails?

[#4]

Have you tried compacting the Inbox after deleting emails? The way IMAP works they still remain in situ after deletion with a "Deleted" flag set. Doing a "compact" is necessary to close up the gaps.

[#5]

I think I have looked in the past but couldn't find the compact command on the webmail interface (I can't access webmail on this machine to check!)

Could you tell me where to look & I will certainly have a try when I'm on a cooperative machine!

Thanks

[#6]

Yes. 

When you are displaying the Inbox contents list you should find a Cog icon in the bottom left corner of the display. Clicking that gives a list of options, the top one being Compact. Selecting that should lead to a "loading" banner at the top followed by a green "compact successful".

Hope this helps.

[#7]

Ah - I think I see my problem; I have found the "compact" option, as you explained thanks, but if the folder is empty the option is greyed out. If I have emptied the trash folder the option is greyed out. So should I run the compact command before emptying the folder?

[#8]

No, it's not the trash/deleted items folder which needs compacting it's the Inbox* (where the 'deleted' messages were originally).

So select the Inbox, then click the cog and choose Compact.

Emptying trash is done by the file system writing a filemark at the beginning of the folder which (effectively) does an automatic Compact.

* Though if you delete messages from the Sent (or another) folder it would be that folder which needs compacting.

[#9]

OK, that makes sense, I think, I'll try that - thankyou.

[#10]

Is this something that can be done for me too?

I have been waiting PATIENTLY for my emails to be unarchived - I was unable to archive them fast enough via Outlook & they were removed.

I opened a ticket about this on 1 August & I need those emails back. I've chased up the issue so many times with empty promises that emails will be restored, first within 72 hours, then 48, then asap, & nothing has happened.

PLEASE HELP!. I've been using PN for donkeys' years & this is the worst service I've ever received.

Posting via the community with email issues seems to be the only way anyone actually gets heard & action is taken. I'm anxious that I will lose these emails as the 30-day deadline is fast approaching & I've done everything to comply with rules & nothing is being done.

[#11]

Apologies for the delay in your request being dealt with. I've requested the mails are restored back to you asap, this should happen within the next 30 minutes.

[#12]

Many thanks Chris, but nothing has happened yet!.

Is there anything I need to do to have them returned? I don't understand why this is taking so long. I don't even have anything sitting in my inbox/sent box/trash/spam...

[#13]

Hi @LisaA, I'm sorry to hear that's the case. So we can narrow down the issue, please can you confirm if this is happening when you're accessing the mailbox via the webmail portal or through a client?

[#14]

Thanks for looking into this.

Both. Webmail seems to be taking slightly longer than usual to filter my emails through to my (client) inbox. I'm having to check my emails on webmail more regularly than usual. Right now for eg, I have about 10 new emails sitting in mailbox via webmail portal since 9 am, but none are going through to my inbox via outlook.

Regardless, I still don't have any of the archived emails returned...

[#15]

Hi @LisaA,

I'm sorry that your archived emails have not yet returned and for any inconvenience that this is causing you. I've checked your account and can see that the mailbox has been reactivated, but the request to restore the archived emails has not gone through correctly - I'm sorry that this happened.

My colleague has now contacted a member of our network administration team directly and has confirmed that they have put this through now. The overall size of the archived emails is very large so it will take a while for the unarchiving process to complete. Your emails should be back with you within 24 hours, please let us know if you are still not seeing these emails in your inbox by this time tomorrow.

Sorry again for the poor experience that you've had here.