Missing email folder for my father's estate

[Carolinetamblyn]

My father died this year and I have been dealing with his estate and probate . I created a folder to store all the emails containing important documents and have been saving them there since March 2023. Today i find all the emails have disappeared along with the whole folder.

This is very distressing so how can i recover these emails ?

[Tudor]

Someone from VM might be able to help you, but it will take 2 or 3 days. 
Please everyone, DO NOT keep important information in the mail system, whoever might be managing it, always take a local copy and a copy in the cloud.

[Adduxi]

Where did you create this folder?  Was it on your laptop, for example?  I'm assuming you don't have any backups?

[Adduxi]

100% agree @Tudor  re backups.  I dumped NTL/VM email a long time ago.  However, hopefully VM can do a restore of this users emails.

[用心棒]

Consider trying the following in webmail:

• select ⚙ > E-mail > Change IMAP subscriptions …
• select ▸ to expand view of folder and repeat  until all folders are visible
• select empty ballot boxes (☐) until all are selected (☑)
• select Save
• select ✉ to return to mail and review folders shown; if any folders selected in previous steps are not shown press Ctrl + Shift + R to reload page

Regrettably if the missing folder and its content remain missing then it is unlikely to be recoverable; please wait for Forum team to confirm.

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[Sololobo]

Laptop, desktop or phone, if the folder was set up using webmail or on an IMAP configured client then the folder will be held on the VM mail servers and should be available for all devices.

Sadly past issues have shown that whether by accidental deletion by the user, or by issues with the operation/configuration of the VM mail servers, the sudden deletion of emails is not a new phenomenon. It's also the case that VM do not back up, and therefore cannot restore, users emails.

It's down to the user to back up their own emails, see this archived post from 2017 for a possible option: https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Forum-Archive/Backing-up-your-Emails-One-of-many-solutions/m-p/...

While an old post, I believe the software suggested is still available and is still a viable option.

Another option is to configure an email client to use the POP configuration and hold all emails on a local device, now considered an "outdated" protocol but still useful in some cases.