Forum Topic

Tech. Advice Please

Earlier this week I was deleting emails from my Sent mailbox.  I was moving them to the Bin and then deleting them, one by one.  Somehow all my Sent emails from before 19 March have been deleted. I contacted BT, my internet provider, and we had an on-line conversation, where I was told nothing they could do, all sent emails had gone, that’s it!  I contacted Apple, as I have an iPad, and they also said the emails have gone and couldn’t be retrieved. Is this correct?  I have all emails from 19 March to today.  I don’t know how I deleted all these hundreds of emails, just like that. A few years back, I had a strange experience when my in-box emptied and then a few days later, all the emails reappeared. Any advice much appreciated.  Thanks.

Martine Guy ● 1824d18 Comments

Another couple of thoughts Martine.  Have you tried a reboot (not reset) of your iPad? Or searching in iCloud for your missing emails?How to restore emails from the iCloud website:1. Go to www.iCloud.com and sign in with your Apple ID.2. Click Mail to view your iCloud emails.3. From the sidebar, select Trash to see your deleted iCloud emails.4. Select a deleted email and use the Move button to restore it to your inbox.

Sue Hammond ● 1823d

I phoned BT this afternoon, as I didn’t like my on-line experience with them.  The young lady I spoke to was courteous and went off to enquire about my problem. She confirmed BT would be unable to restore the emails. Before I rang her, I noticed that the emails went missing from the date the direct debit is taken for our monthly bill.  Not sure if that is relevant, but our payments are up to date, so it isn’t a bill problem. Thanks again for the further advice, I think I had already tried some of it and was unsuccessful.

Martine Guy ● 1823d

I'm not going to try and give advice as I'm not familiar with Apple projects or BT's email services. However, this entry on BT's website seems to indicate there may be compatibility issues between Apple's products and BT services:https://www.bt.com/help/email/i-m-having-problems-using-my-apple-device-with-bt-emailI have seen problems with synchronising certain data between iPhones and Microsoft's Exchange email services in a corporate environment (although that's been related to security issues); but I'd make a guess that BT use MS products ... so hopefully if you can search and find the items it's just a synchronisation issue that one of the other suggestions will fix.

Michael Ixer ● 1824d

Another thought. My hosting company (not a phone company, which personally I would never recommend as you're then tied to them unless you are happy to lose your email address if you move provider) can and has restored deleted emails for me via their own backups. Try insisting they do that for you.

Freddie Francis ● 1824d

Hi Martine. Try this:Recover Deleted Emails on iPhone iPad from TrashActually, when an Email is deleted from your iPhone or iPad mail inbox, it is not exactly permanently removed from your device immediately. It first gets been moved to the Trash folder, but that doesn’t mean it’s always in there. Your iPhone or iPad will perform the second and permanently deletion after about one week (by default).If you realized you deleted Emails by accident in time, then you can follow the steps below to get them back.Step 1. On your iPhone or iPad, launch the Mail app.Step 2. Tap on Mailboxes.Step 3. Select the Trash icon and tap it.Step 4. Tap the Edit button.Step 5. Select the Emails you want to recover and hit the Move button.Move them to Inbox.

Sue Hammond ● 1824d

I am so grateful to everyone for all the advice and suggestions and will have a go at the weekend hopefully, when my son can be with me to help. I think that many of my Sent emails still exist, as they are part of email threads/conversations in the InBox, so all is not lost!  I had been meaning to clear out the Sent mailbox for some time, but not as drastically as this. BT were useless.  I spoke to them online and they were curt, you’ve lost the emails, there’s nothing we can do, that’s it.  I spoke to an Apple advisor on the phone and he patiently went into my iPad online to see if he could fix things.  He thought it was a BT problem.  

Martine Guy ● 1824d

BT told us when we had a problem that we should just check into our online account every so often.  We used to more often of course when we were away from home.

Philippa Bond ● 1824d

It may simply be the settings on your Apple products. If you have set them to only show the last month for instance it won’t show any older than a month. If you set this to show always you may find they were there all the time but just hidden from view. Good luck

Paul Clements ● 1824d

Go to Settings>Mail>Select the BT account>Advanced.  Now I don't have a BT account, but there will be various options here regarding sent and/or deleted mail.  If possible, you want to ensure that sent mail is set to be 'never' deleted, and that deleted mail is available for at least a month, or never, or is archived.  Each mail provider will have different settings and parameters available here.  I have many, many email addresses with different mail providers and the settings are all different.
If you can't find those options on your iPad, then try to log in to your BT mail online through a browser, and find the settings that way.  There is the tiniest chance that you can retrieve your recently deleted mail this way.  BT help are notoriously ignorant btw, and Apple would not know what is possible for BT.

Rose Compton ● 1824d

I had a similarly head-scratching experience recently Martine. I was expecting a quotation for decoration work and kept checking my emails but didn’t see it. Then the painter contacted me by text and asked if I had received the quote. I said no, I hadn’t, but would check my junk mail folder on my ipad mail app. The quote wasn’t there either. It wasn’t until I went into mail on Outlook on the Internet that I saw his quote. It was in the junk folder, but it did not show up on the ipad mail app, even though it had been sent in the last few days.

Catherine Schade ● 1824d

It is very strange, I thought I would search the Sent mailbox and I was able to find emails going back years.  Yet the Sent box is empty, before the middle of March.

Martine Guy ● 1824d

Thanks again for replies so far.  Freddie, we did look on another device, but not there.  
If I follow Ben’s advice about Microsoft Outlook, could this cause problems in the future?  I am nervous about anything like this.

Martine Guy ● 1824d

Do you also receive email via you’re phone or other device. They may still be on one of those if so.

Freddie Francis ● 1824d

Not a problem.Might be worth going to the app store and downloading Microsoft Outlook, once done; add your affected email account and they may reappear on that. That might also kick start the emails appearing on other apps etc. Had something similar and this helped sort the problem.Good luck.

Ben Rainbow ● 1824d

Ben, I am sorry to sound dense, but all I know is that I use an Apple iPad, and the internet provider is BT.  How do I find out what the email client is?  Isn’t that BT? Really, I am clueless with tech!  Thank you for replying, though.

Martine Guy ● 1824d

What email client (Outlook, Apple's own, Brower based gmail) are you using?

Ben Rainbow ● 1824d

Hi Carole, thank you for replying.  It is good advice because BT and Apple both told me to do that, but there’s nothing in the garbage.   I am wondering where all the emails went?

Martine Guy ● 1824d

Hallo, MartineWhat do I know, basically nothing, BUT try to go to your garbish/recycling site and try to re-instal.  Might work.  Good luckCarole T/

carole tanner ● 1824d