Resolved
Hi,
We are aware that some customers are experiencing issues with their email service and are very sorry for the inconvenience this is causing. Our teams are working flat out to fully restore all emails as soon as possible.
ModTeam
Update 13/07/23 - This has now been resolved. If you are still having issues, please make your own separate post giving as much detail as possible.
Mixed news: I seem to be getting emails in and sent now; and seem to have stopped getting multiples of the same email. So that's an improvement. However, still no mail in inbox before Virgin's apologetic email; and nothing in my folders yet; so this means I'm stuck for the info in those older mails. Annoying, but if it's fixed fairly soon, not fatal. Still considering alternatives, though, as would prefer not to go through this again!
Strange thing, the difference in customers' experiences - I was talking to some friends who are also on Virgin last night who'd had no email problems at all (and to another couple who'd changed their email to professional hosting after previous Virgin problems!)
So reassuring to find someone has experienced the same problems (multiple duplications - over 300 copies of the same 8 messages sent throughout the night!), no new messages until today and continued absence of folders and older messages. Lucky friends who have had no problems...
Come on Virgin - I'm beginning to forget all the things I need to do for which the older emails are essential! But guess it's just a waiting game now...
Whats annoying is this isnt account specific its email specific, I still have folders (tempting fate I know) and so does mum but dads is the one that is playing up, nothing in bin and 10 emails but using nearly 300mb of data
Approaching 72 hours and no update here in 24 hours....Come on guys, do better....
yes when the outage was happening Outlook could not connect to server and outlook folders were populated....when server back on it just removed the folder structure from my outlook. Tried via a web browser and the same, no folder structure. So all emails lost ...this is priority if many people affected.
Let me know if you need any more info. I am using Outlook from Office 2021.
Frank
fxv300 wrote:yes when the outage was happening Outlook could not connect to server and outlook folders were populated....when server back on it just removed the folder structure from my outlook. Tried via a web browser and the same, no folder structure. So all emails lost ...this is priority if many people affected.
Let me know if you need any more info. I am using Outlook from Office 2021.
Frank
This actually does make perfect sense, in a way. Hypothetically, let’s say that VM have suffered from a massive hardware failure, bad configuration change (someone typed in the wrong command) etc. and a large number of user mailboxes were deleted or irretrievably corrupted? Now if yours is one of them, when Outlook tries to connect, it fails, there’s nothing for it to connect to. Instead you are seeing the ‘local’ stored copy of the email structure - ands naturally you see the copy of the historic emails and folders.
Now furthermore, image that as part of restoring things, VM first have to recreate new, empty mailboxes for effected users, and they do this. Suddenly your copy of of Outlook is now able to connect, but when it does it finds a new empty mailbox with only a few recent new emails in it - it then proceeds to do what it is supposed to do (if you are connecting over IMAP) which is to sync the local cached copy of your emails with what it regards as the ‘master’ copy, ie the new empty mailbox on VM’s servers. From your point of view, all your folder structure and emails within it vanish!
There is no way that you as a customer can do anything at all to get those messages back - they’re gone, permanently and for good. Well unless, and let’s be honest nobody very few actually does this, which is to keep your own local backup copy of emails on a separate disk. Or, alternatively VM do have some sort of backup copies of the mailboxes and will, at some point slowly, re-populate the new empty ones with the backups, your email clients will then re-sync and all will be back. Even in this scenario, inevitably some emails will be permanently lost, those being sent while the mailbox didn’t exist, for example. Whether they are re-sent is entirely under the control of the sending system, depending on how it is configured, the sender may just try for, say 12 hours, can’t find a valid destination mailbox and drop the message after that time. Nothing you nor, indeed VM can do about that.
What is more concerning though, is that it has been understood that VM don’t actually have backups of user mailboxes, in fact buried in the small print of the Ts & Cs is a paragraph in which YOU, the customer, assumes all responsibility for keeping backups of important email. This is further evidenced by numerous posts on here from customers who have accidentally deleted emails and even entire mailboxes and the responses from the forum team have tended to be along the lines of ‘sorry but...’!
Having said that , there is still one glimmer of hope, it may well be that VM do keep snapshots of the systems which hold the mailboxes and in-extremis, they might be able to extract data from it and restore it. But this can be a slow, laborious process. Which is why they won’t entertain it on a single case basis, it’s just too resource intensive to be worth it for them do restore one person’s mailbox or message - hence the oft-reported, ‘we don’t have backups of user’s emails, sorry’.
Now I have been doing this sort of stuff for long enough to be fully aware of the problems and complexities involved.
Realistically, with the best will in the world, some of you, hopefully a minority, are never going to get your historic emails back. Fingers crossed; and assuming that VM actually do have some kind of email backup to recover your messages from; most will come back. But it is unlikely to be quick, possibly weeks for some people!
Hi, is the issue with email resolved as I am able to access email on my iPhone but unable to on web browser ?
After the recent disruption with emails one of my secondary email addresses ( used by my wife ) has lost the contents of all the subfolders where she keeps the emails. How does she recover them?
Just to add to this: In the folders that are Now empty are many promotion vouchers that are now worthless. thanks for nothing V Media.
This needs to be updated as the date and time according to the status is now 23/06/2023. When will this be sorted I need to access some historical emails as a matter of urgency.
On my emails I had two folders one marked Important and one marked Insurance. In them I kept all insurances policies etc and the other any important papers ie airline tickets etc. When the emails crashed on the 19th they were there then all of a sudden they vanished. I have l/l virgin and they said to go to webmail and they should be there. I cannot access webmail. It keeps saying forbidden. also any emails I had before the 19th aren’t there. These really are important. How can I get them back please.
Forum TeamHi Jazzysmum,
Thank you for reaching out to us in our community and welcome back, 👋. We apologise again to those individuals who have been experiencing issues with their email services since Monday. Our teams are continuing to work on restoring all users’ access as a priority and we will do this as soon as possible.
Regards
Paul.
FYI. I have mail clients running on two different machines, both using Outlook (but different versions). One account is set up for POP3 and is now working again. The other account is set up with IMAP and I've received no emails since Sunday night. My emails are also available on Webmail. Is IMAP still affected by the ongoing email issues?
When email came back up I only have current emails since it went down.
How can I restore/retrieve my personal files/emails pre email service failure?
Can anyone help and has anybody else suffered this problem?
TIA
I can now send and receive emails, but I still don't have access to any of my folders or emails prior to Sunday (19th), when can we expect to get these back?
I need lots of the information stored there.
Hi Worthers1056
We apologise again to those individuals who have been experiencing issues with their email services since Monday. Our teams are continuing to work on restoring all users’ access as a priority and we will do this as soon as possible.
Regards
Send and receive is working, but when is the likelihood of getting access back to folders/emails prior to the 19th June?
As soon as possible is not really an answer - could be seconds/minutes/days/weeks/months.
I can not run my business - or life - without access to information in previous (blueyonder) emails and folders
An actual description of the problems that Virgin is running into would help and why they happened in the first place.
