Missing emails

[#1]

Today I referred to www.ancestry.com, via my local public library.  I found 2 interesting documents, so I used a facility of  www.ancestry.com to forward hyperlinks to these interesting documents to one of my PN email addresses.  On leaving the library I checked my PN inbox using my mobile phone.  Yes, messages with the hyperlinks had been received in my PN inbox.  Good.  
When I got home I downloaded my mail from PN, but surprise, surprise the expected messages with the hyperlinks did not appear in my Outlook in box.  
I went to Squirrel mail but nothing, not even in the spam folder.  I re-checked my PN inbox, with the mobile phone.  I did a search on all mail folders in Outlook.  No trace.  I rechecked my PN inbox with my mobile phone.  The cupboard was bare.
In the past few months, I have also had several emails that people assure me they have sent, but the never got to me.  
So is there a mysterious store of messages awaiting me to do something to download them ?  
Is the PN anti-spam filtering too fierce?
Any suggestions would be appreciated.  Thanks

[#2]

grecian,
When you say that you check your PN inbox with your phone, what method do you use to do this?

[#3]

Have you looked in the Outlook Junk E-mail folder?
The Plusnet spam filtering happened BEFORE it was placed in your inbox and you saw them using your mobile so it is nothing to do with the PN spam filtering.

[#4]

Quote from: SparckZero

grecian, When you say that you check your PN inbox with your phone, what method do you use to do this?

I use my mobile phone.  You need to set it up first.  Mine is a Sony Ericsson.  If you go to the S.E. website you can get the settings sent as a text to your mobile phone.  You then install them in the phone.  I expect other makes of mobile phone offer similar.  You can also enter the settings manually, which can be a bit fiddly but not impossible.  When you check your mail using your phone it normally counts as internet use and your mobile phone network charges accordingly. 

[#5]

grecian,
My apologies, I should have phrased the question differently - does your phone download the e-mails directly from PlusNet's server? If so, your phone may be removing the mails from the server - this would then mean you can't see them in webmail, and they wouldn't be there to download to your computer. I'd suggest checking your phone settings for a "leave a copy of mail on server" option or similar...

[#6]

Sorry I misinterpreted your post.  The phone merely views what is waiting to be downloaded.  You can read emails on the PN server, but not delete or modify them. I notice that where I have entered an email address into my "spam filter / blocked" settings on PN,  messages from that address can be viewed and read on-line at PN via the mobile phone.  However, they never get downloaded to me, but are deleted when I use my PC download messages via Outlook.  
It is a bit of a mystery why the www.ancestry.com messages disappear.  I went into my library again today and the same thing happened.  Messages forwarded by www.ancestry.com could be seen on PN via the mobile phone, but disappeared when I tried to download them into Outlook.  As a work-around,  in future I will have to use a USB memory flash drive to capture files rather than emailing them to myself.  However, I still wonder about several non-received emails from friends.
dick:quote

[#7]

how about not checking them on your phone and see if you then get them, that seems a sensible test to me
also you cant see the spam folder on OE, it can only be viewed via web  mail or thunderbird with IMAP, and you heve to set up the spam folder before you can see is contents

[#8]

I'm sorry, but what you are saying makes no sense whatsoever.
There is only the one mailbox on Plusnet - your mobile phone and Outlook both access that mailbox, although both of them have the choice of accessing the mailbox using pop3 or IMAP, it is still the same underlying mailbox. Webmail also accesses the same mailbox (it uses IMAP).
Did you check your Outlook Junk E-mail folder as I suggested? You might also need to check your Outlook junk settings.
Can you do the following steps to check out what is happening:
1. Send yourself a test message
2. From your PC go in to Webmail and check that the test message can be seen
3. Now read the test message using your mobile phone
4. In webmail refresh the list of messages (Check mail link in the left hand column) - make sure the test message is still shown.
5. Get the mail using Outlook and make sure you get the test email
If this all works it points to it being Outlook that is junking the ancestry.com emails and we will need to help you explore why that is - please post which version of Outlook you are using (Outlook or Outlook Express - they are totally different - and the version number).

[#9]

Thanks for the message.  I have done as suggested:
1. Send yourself a test message ~ Done
2. From your PC go in to Webmail and check that the test message can be seen ~ Done and message seen
3. Now read the test message using your mobile phone ~ Done and message seen
4. In webmail refresh the list of messages (Check mail link in the left hand column) - make sure the test message is still shown. ~ Done and test message seen
5. Get the mail using Outlook and make sure you get the test email ~ Done and test message downloaded
I use Outlook 2003 SP3
I looked at my Junk email settings.  
Ticked was “Permanently delete suspected junk mail instead of moving to the junk email folder”.  I unticked this.
Apart from that my Outlook was set with low junk-mail protection with no blocked senders, domains etc.
Maybe the problem was the ticked “Permanently delete suspected junk mail…?”  I now think that suspected junk mail would disappear immediately and not be moved to the Deleted Items folder?
Maybe messages from www.ancestry.com were treated as suspect junk mail and deleted immediately.  Similarly, some other missing emails used encodings other than Western European, so maybe they got treated as suspected email and immediately deleted by Outlook.  
I think another run at www.ancestry.com may confirm all this?
dick:quote

[#10]

Give it another go - looks like you may have found the reason.

[#11]

Just to say that the problem is now resolved.  It was the junk email settings on Outlook that were causing emails to be immediately deleted.  Now I have unticked the "permanently delete suspected Junk email ..." box messages are not being lost,.  Messages incorrectly suspected as junk mail are not deleted any more, but go into the junk email folder, where I can pick them up.  Conversely it does mean I am seeing more spam than before, but I am pleased not to be losing valid emails.
Thanks for suggestions from this forum, which led me to solve the problem
.