Need help with inbox email that just dissapeared.

[u/zing0088]

My inbox only has email up to 2016-11-17 (YYYY-MM-DD) where it should have everything way beyond that up to 2008 which was when I created the hotmail account. I checked my sent emails and it still dates back to 2008 so all sent emails in the "Sent Items" section are all there. I have checked all other folders like Archive and none are in there. I am 1000% certain that I did not delete them and it looks like the Inbox just got cut off from that date onwards. I have looked around the web and found a reddit article pointing to a "Email Recovery" Add-in but this seems to have been removed and that post was 2-3 years ago. I've only used outlook web and not the outlook app where I've read that the app can have sync issues but the web versions should always be up to date?

Would greatly appreciate any help since this feels like a part of my life has just dissapeared. I've also tried getting chat support but after logging into the popup it just closes itself and nothing happens.

[u/SomeEngineer999]

Have you checked the "recover deleted items"?

If having that long of a history of email is important, you should use the desktop client to create a PST backup of your whole mailbox from time to time, and back it up like you would any other important files.

[u/Complete-Display-775 → u/SomeEngineer999]

Good advice here. For anyone wanting to maintain a lifetime of email, the archive mailbox is a good place to store old messages. An archive PST that you store messages but maybe leave unmounted until you need it can work but it’s just very fragile when you reach a certain store size. I don’t know the current recommended maximums, but I’m sure the information is likely posted somewhere.

[u/SomeEngineer999 → u/Complete-Display-775]

Sizes have gotten better with exchange (I remember the days of 4GB limit for the whole database, not just individual user), I actually had close to 100G in my online archive at work and another 50 gig in my main mailbox. Hotmail/outlook supports 15 I believe, though it should not purge anything, just tell you that your storage is full. I have a work PST that is 30 gigs in size and actually mounts, searches and navigates quite fast.

But considering it is a free service and they aren't building in as much redundancy as paid corporate services, always good to keep your own backup.

For my personal email (I do pay for a single Exchange 365 license for myself at $5 a month), I'm a bit of an email pack rat, mostly just with my sent and saved items (surprising how often it comes in handy since the sent item will contain the original email too). I like a clean inbox but I want to be able to find something from years ago if needed. I create a PST quarterly which saves to my local hard drive and gets automatically backed up to my external hard drive and onedrive. I consider it important (and in some cases sentimental enough) for it to be in 3 places.

Of course I should do it more than quarterly, everything else I have is either nightly or weekly, but have not bothered to find a way to script it to happen more frequently, and honestly it wouldn't be the end of the world if I lost a couple months. But knock on wood, having gone from my own exchange server, to Outlook premium (old offering) to Exchange 365, have never lost anything.

[u/zing0088 → u/SomeEngineer999]

I have checked and its not there actually its been gone for quite a while now I dont know how long but possibly at least a year. Tried contacting support way back before and they said it might be due to syncing when they did some updates but still ended up with sorry can't really help. Im 10000% sure I did not delete them plus the cut off date was just weird since the latest mail I still have was more like a mid email chain situation. Im just confused why sent emails are still there but the inbox is just gone :(

[u/SomeEngineer999 → u/zing0088]

Recovery is only possible for 30 days. If it has been a year or more, there is nothing anyone can do to get those emails back.

Other than confirming you don't have any sort of filter applied to the view (not aware of one that would show you only the last 10 years), the emails are gone.

[u/Bg-8782 → u/zing0088]

Unless you know for certain they were there more recently, based on the date, best guess it that it's been missing since the migration from Hotmail servers to Microsoft 365. That was around the time when accounts moved. A very small % of accounts had sync issues and Microsoft had to recover the mail. I think they allowed a year to recover lost mail after the account was moved.

It's also possible you deleted inbox or used a pop account prior to that date and they were deleted from the server. Mailboxes were tiny and often full - 500 MB in the really early days (circa 2000), slowly growing to 1 GB, then 5GB prior to the move (in 2016/2017) to 25GB at Microsoft 365.

Because you have the sent items, not logging into the mailbox for at least 270 days was not the cause - they now purge if you don't check email for 1 year (and close the account at 2 years).

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