Forum Discussion

meditation11's avatar
meditation11
Just joined
16 days ago

Retrieving deleted items

This is a long shot, but will try anyhow. About 6 days ago I seem to have inadvertently deleted the whole of my Sent items folder from one of my VM email accounts - ie I not only deleted the whole of Sent items, I then proceeded to empty the Deleted items folder to which they'd been transferred. (Stupid thing to do, I know - think I must have pressed "Select all" in the Sent items folder instead of making a selection of the items to be deleted , then by the time I realised what I'd done, it was too late.) The emails were only on webmail, ie no copies on my computer's email client.

I did phone the VM helpline to see if there was anything they could do to retrieve them, but they said there wasn't. Does anyone have any bright ideas as to what I might try to get them back?  

5 Replies

  • Adduxi's avatar
    Adduxi
    Very Insightful Person
    16 days ago

    AFAIK VM do not have backups of mailboxes?  But there are other Mail users here who may know more hopefully.

  • 用心棒's avatar
    用心棒
    Very Insightful Person
    16 days ago

    There is “no way” for you to recover the deleted emails once they are deleted from your Deleted Items / Trash folder.

    Alas the only positive here is that the experience will provide the impetus to put in place contingency plans to better protect against data loss events, i.e. data backups, confirmation restoration from data backups works, alternative email account, etc.

    FWIW be aware that webmail is an IMAP client meaning anything done in it is reflected on the email server and other IMAP clients when they check for new emails;  if your computer's email client used IMAP it would not have protected your sent emails.

  • meditation11's avatar
    meditation11
    Just joined
    15 days ago

    Thank you for your replies - much as I thought, and as the last reply says it should nudge me into taking more care with backing up. 

    • Akua_A's avatar
      Akua_A
      Icon for Forum Team rankForum Team
      14 days ago

      Hi meditation11 

      Welcome to our forums, and sorry to hear you experience this with deleting from your mail box. As mentioned by the community, there is no way to retrieve the emails. We can understand the inconvenience caused. Please let us know if you need any further help, and we will do our best to help.

      Thanks,