Sent emails deleted

[Chrisjones78]

I've noticed today that all my sent emails prior to this month have disappeared from my sent mailbox. Checked on the pc, my iPhone and kindle and they're gone on all devices. Can anyone help me retrieve them please?

[gg30340]

If you have logged onto your email account using a browser (webmail) and the emails are not there in any of your folders it means that the emails have been deleted from the BT mail servers and can not be recovered.

Usually the only thing that BT can do for you is to tell you which device triggered the deletion. 

[Chrisjones78]

Hi, thank you. How do I go about contacting BT to ask them that question? Thank you.

[gg30340]

I suspect that it would be difficult to get the BT customer service agents to deal with it so I have notified the moderators of the forum about your problem. Once they have read this they may be able to help. They will advise you by posting on this thread.

[RobbieMac]

Hi @Chrisjones78

Welcome and thanks for your post!

I am sorry for the problems with your sent emails.  The advice that @gg30340 gave you is spot on.  When you log on to webmail via a browser and if the emails aren't there it means they've been deleted and can't be recovered I'm afraid.  What you could potentially check is if you've any devices set up to retrieve your emails via POP as opposed to IMAP.  POP would download the emails to that device.

If that's not the case and you haven't deleted the emails I would recommend changing your password immediately.

Thanks,

Robbie

[ShaunOM]

The question concerns Sent e-mails. If using POP on a device, the sent messages will, generally speaking, remain in the Sent folder on that device. The POP protocol only handles received e-mails with an option to remove them from the server once they've been downloaded to the device. It will not affect the handling of Sent messages.

So if Sent items are being deleted automatically, it must be down to a server or IMAP setting.

[gg30340]

@ShaunOM 

You are replying to an eight month old thread so you may not get a reply from the OP.

[licquorice]

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@ShaunOM wrote:

The question concerns Sent e-mails. If using POP on a device, the sent messages will, generally speaking, remain in the Sent folder on that device. The POP protocol only handles received e-mails with an option to remove them from the server once they've been downloaded to the device. It will not affect the handling of Sent messages.

So if Sent items are being deleted automatically, it must be down to a server or IMAP setting.

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IMAP is the receive protocol, sending is via SMTP.

[ShaunOM]

Yes, it's true that SMTP handles sending of e-mails. IMAP though involves, of course, a little more more than just receiving since when it's enabled in e-mail client programs it also ensures full synchronisation of all e-mail folders including sent and received e-mail folders as well as any user-created personal folders.

I was really just suggesting that where POP is implemented, it's unlikely to be involved with any strange behaviour concerning sent e-mails being deleted which is more likely down to the client software itself (regardless of the protocol) or the server via a rule or some other anomalous behaviour. For example, I know someone with a btinternet.com address whose sent e-mails are being deleted (sent to Deleted Messages) after 24 hrs. We're surmising that this might be being caused by his iPhone client software since all the webmail settings appear normal (e.g. no rules have be set up that might account for it) and there are no clues in his Thunderbird Windows client program. This has been going on since December 2023 and only involves messages sent since that date - all sent message up to that date remain in the Sent folder as normal. It's all rather odd and I raised it here in case any other BT e-mail users have encountered similar problems and have narrowed it down to the BT server or not.