Unexplainable loss of email

Mail
1

Good afternoon.

Wonder if anyone can shed a light on this please?

History:
Last week I accidentally moved a self created IMAP subfolder (ZFolders) into Trash. Trash also held many years of email having never been asked to Empty. I then asked Trash to empty.

When I realised my mistake I cancelled the Empty Bin, or at least I thought I had.

The ZFolders and it’s associated subfolders were still there, so I dragged them back into the position they had been removed from. Trash also still held many of the emails that had previously been there.

All appeared to be fine, the ZFolders subfolders were still showing as were the emails they held.

Yesterday I started tidying up ZFolders, moving subfolders to where I felt they should be in the ZFolders folder tree.

Later, when I looked again ‘all the emails in all the subfolders’ of ZFolders had disappeared. Looking at the IMAP server they were empty there too.

I cannot find them anywhere! What has happened?

2

You can’t cancel emptying the Trash. Sorry.

3

Thanks for the answre.

So moving a folder out of Trash after telling Trash to empty doesn’t save it?

4

No.

It may have been some delayed action by the server purging the Trash. But as soon as you instruct the server to empty the Trash, the messages are permanently deleted. You can’t undo that.

5

Thank you very much for confirming that. Sadly I hadn’t set up an automatic backup of ZFolders.

This is a lesson hard learnt, hopefully helping someone else in the event.

Best wishes,
Russell.

6

It doesn’t completely explain why are still many emails left in the Trash. Going back several years, though there are big gaps in the timeline of what’s left.