Losing a draft email

[Johnquinn]

Good morning. I was nearing the end of writing a lengthy email this morning (helping a student with her dissertation) when I somehow pressed the wrong button and deleted it in its entirety  Is there any way I can find earlier drafts of it? It has been in the drafts folder for over a week while I've been working on it so it had been saved several times and I am not even sure how I deleted it. I have (probably stupidly) pressed the 'keep composing message' at the bottom straight after I deleted it but that has not brought it back.

Any advice would be gratefully received. Thanks.
Cheers,
John.

[gg30340]

There is only one copy kept. Every time you save it it over writes the previous one.

Have you checked your Trash folder?

[Johnquinn]

I have and it's not in trash. Looks like I'm going to have to rewrite the whole thing then. I haven't a clue how I managed to lose it though. Oh well, can't win em all...
Cheers anyway.

[gg30340]

I have assumed you are using webmail and not an email client/app. Is that correct?

Did you send it by any chance. Check the sent folder.

If you deleted it it should be in the Trash folder.

Have you checked all the other folders you have?

[Johnquinn]

It's just the usual btinternet folder on my laptop. The draft email (such as it is) still exists and is in my drafts folder. It's all the words written in it that have vanished. I somehow managed to delete all of them, although I haven't the slightest idea how. I was just finishing it off and intending to send it this morning when the text totally vanished.  I have checked all the other folders and can't find any trace of what I have written. And now I have to go to the dentist. This is shaping up to be a great day all round.

[gg30340]

I was under the impression that you had deleted the whole draft email hence my reply regarding it being in the Trash folder.

If it is "just" the content of the email that has "gone missing" it will have been over written when the draft was saved by the automatically set save time, which can be as low as 1 minute or when the draft was closed.

I have no idea how you accidentally deleted the contents so can not help you any further.

Perhaps if you are writing a long email it may be best to do it on a Word document where you can save it and it is backed up and when completed cut and paste it into your email.

[PeterE17]

It's too easy to press Ctrl-A by accident then hit another key to delete every last word. Autosaves and Ctrl-Z can sometimes recover the lost text, but not always. That goes for composing in  Webmail, or in this forum, or in notepad, or most word processors, and so on ...