Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Question

Live Mail deleted all email.

Aug 4, 2014 8:15AM PDT

I turned on my computer and all my emails were deleted from Live Mail. I've used this for over 4 years and this has never happened before. Any advice?

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Answer
I know
Aug 4, 2014 11:22PM PDT

I know this answer is unlikely to be what you're looking for but: Where are your backups? Things can (and do) go wrong at seemingly random times. It'd be a variation on the gambler's fallacy to think that the longer something went without issue the less likely it is to have problems going forward. With computer software, assuming the hardware remains in good working order, the probability of something going wrong is constant. It's the same on Day 1 as Day 5000. Just like it doesn't matter how many times you pull the lever on a one-arm bandit machine at a casino, every single pull has the exact same probability of winning. You could feed quarters (or whatever) into the machine all day long and your odds of winning never go up or down.

So statistics and probability lessons aside, why haven't you simply restored the backups you made of important files? Assuming the answer is you have no backups, why is that? Clearly your emails are important to you or you wouldn't be here asking about it, so why weren't they backed up? Maybe this will be a lesson for the future in the importance of backing up things you don't want to lose. Plenty of people have learned this by losing things more important than a few emails, so consider yourself lucky... Relatively speaking.

- Collapse -
Answer
Only a few advice items.
Aug 5, 2014 3:40AM PDT

1. Restore from backup.
2. Consider a move to Thunderbird.

I consider Live (email app) to be what it is. That is, a not entirely in your interest app by you know who. Thunderbird on the other hand is done by folk that consider what we want and have very high standards. Any choice so far still requires we maintain a backup.
Bob

- Collapse -
Answer
Do you get an error when you go to the folder?
Aug 6, 2014 2:44AM PDT

Or are the folders just empty?