Why am I permanently losing emails from the "deleted" hotmail folder?
I have 3 email accounts within T'bird. Web Hotmail has always auto moved emails from its Inbox to the "deleted" folder after a short period and then permanently deleted them after a few days. Until recently that was also happening in T'Bird. However, now the Hotmail Inbox messages disappear within less than an hour of arriving and are not to be found in any of the other folders. I've checked all the account settings, not having changed anything, but can not see any option which would account for the change.
I wonder if anyone can advise me what may have happened please? If the message is one that I wish to deal with later, I usually mark it as "unread" and move it into the "drafts" folder, which works, but I've recently lost a few messages which I thought I could go back to in slow time. I've been able to go into webmail and use Hotmail's recovery system to resurrect the lost message from its deleted folder.
Geoff
All Replies (9)
What is your account type - POP or IMAP?
Morning C1. Thanks for your interest.
The hotmail account, where the problem lies, is IMAP. My NTLworld account is POP3, and my Googlemail account is IMAP, Although I rarely use this latter IMAP account, emails remain in the Inbox until I delete/move them.
As far as Thunderbird is concerned check your retention settings and your Thunderbird account settings for the Hotmail account. See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Disappearing_mail#It.27s_just_doing_what_you_told_it_to_do
If there's nothing unusual there, you'll have to look in your Hotmail account settings on the Hotmail server. I.e. you'll need to login to your Hotmail account via browser and check your account settings.
Thank you. I had already looked through my T'Bird account settings as well as Hotmail's own settings on the web, but could see nothing which suggested mail would be deleted or moved from the Inbox. I've been able to use Hotmail's "recover deleted items" option to find anything important which disappeared and I'm now immediately, in T'Bird, transferring anything from the Hotmail Inbox to my Ntlworld account Inbox.
Pity, however, that the problem remains unsolved. Thank you for trying.
Geoff
Did you ask Microsoft?
I'll try that thanks - and if I get a solution I'll post it back here.
I looked at Microsoft support, which had a few similar questions but none of which quite fitted. Before posting a question, I went by to the web version of my Hotmail account (now Outlook.com) for the 4th time to look through the options, and I seemed to have cracked it!
Options > Mail > Accounts > POP or IMAP > the first option says " Let devices and apps use POP, yes or no". Yes was pre-selected. As I have Hotmail configured as an IMAP in T'Bird, I checked the "No" option, sent an email to my Hotmail account, and it has both reverted to downloading in bold (which had recently also been one of the changes), and it appears to be languishing happily in my Inbox without disappearing automatically after I opened it. I don't know what caused this change as I certainly did not alter the previous settings, but it looks to be fixed.
Hmmm, did your phone, or a significant others, also suddenly stop getting mail?
Sounds to me like your phone, or another device, was getting mail as a pop device and deleting the mail on download. Perhaps putting them in the outlook pop folder in the deleted folder, which is the default action on hotmail.
BTW, do not use your drafts folder for anything but drafts. it can do terrible things to emails as to be in that folder they are expected to be in edit mode. If you want another folder, just create one.
Hi Matt. As I spend enough time on the computer, I make a point of not accessing mail on my phone, so I can't answer your query. When i travel i do access mail on my Nexus tablet via K-9, which allows me to see all emails from different accounts in a single place. The only action I take after reading is to "unread" those I wish to look at again. As I then see all the emails again when I get back to the home PC, I've not taken note of any odd movements.
I've used the draft folder for a number of years without any difficulty, but thanks for your suggestion.