Thank you @Molly_T but in response to your last sentence it was my post that initiated this conversation and I am no nearer finding a solution - the solution @Jacquig1 found does not apply to me.
I have definitely made no changes to my settings either before or after my emails disappeared but for the 2 weeks prior to the event there were repeated messages from Virgin saying there was a problem in my area followed by assurances that the problem had been fixed, the most recent was yesterday. I may be no expert but please do not be misled into thinking user error is likely by my category of "Tuning In", it is that because after over 30 years of being heavily involved IT and many successful troubleshooting exercises for myself and others this is my first foray into the Virgin Community as a last resort.
I cannot even find any settings which limit the number of emails in my Inbox (BTW unlike @jacquig1 I use an Android) and I cannot imagine what settings I could have changed that would have removed only one year's worth of emails and put only the last month's into bin. I do have a huge number (about 34000) but don't see how removing about1500 would cross any boundary limit.
When Virgin can set up software to access my Bin to remove emails older than about 1 month it is possible that their system problems may have involved an accidental temporary effect of removing some of my emails especially since the emails have disappeared from webmail. Although I am very familiar with the settings menu in webmail and in Outlook, my email client, I normally do not go near that, using Outlook as a client server, and I repeat I was nowhere near any settings menu around the time my problem occurred.
Do you, @Molly_T, have any suggestions on settings to look at or any other ideas? It is impossible to communicate with anyone from Virgin who can provide more technical information than they get from reading off a pre-prepared knowledge base crib sheet.
