Emails lost

[Willster]

I decided to tidy up my mail on iPad Pro 10.5 running latest OS. I created a new folder called PayPal, selected all my emails from PayPal and moved them to the new folder. Only they’ve all disappeared! I’ve checked in every other folder like Bin, Junk etc and they aren’t there either. I’ve done a reset and toggled email accounts on and off but no joy. I’d really like these emails back!

Edit: I’ve just done a search and they all seem to appear in the results but the OS doesn’t want to tell me where they are!

 

[twerppoet]

Can you see and open the PayPal folder?

 

[Willster]

Yes I can see and open it. It also has one email in it that I put in there later on it’s own.

 

[twerppoet]

You said you can see them in a search.

When you view an email from search, where it can be found is listed right under the subject title, or if it is in a thread it will be abover the header. Since they don’t seem to be deleted, this may offer a clue as to where they are hiding.

 

[twerppoet]

Another possibility is that you’ve accidently enabled the filter for the folder at the bottom. The default (when on) is to show only unread files.

 

[Willster]

Thanks for that. Very helpful. I made sure the filter was not selected. The “found in mailbox” actually appears in one of two different places on the selected email. Not sure why. Unfortunately I have searched for the emails and selected and moved 5-10 at a time into the folder I want them in. Most if not all are now where they should be. I will when time perhaps try and find any that may have slipped through the net and see where my iPad thinks they are! I thought I was clever selecting and moving all my PayPal emails in one go but in hindsight I should perhaps have moved them in smaller batches and checked the progress!

 

[Willster]

Update. I’ve just done a search and in some cases I got not one selected email but several “headings” instead. After a few minutes the mail application crashed.

 

[twerppoet]

What kind of email account do you have: google, icloud, yahoo, etc.?

 

[Willster]

Virginmedia.

 

[twerppoet]

Hmm. A lot of the ISP email accounts are POP3 accounts. This means they actually store emails locally on the ipad, instread of syncing them with online serves. Depending on your settings, they then delete the original emails from the sever, or the email client pretends they aren’t there anymore.

It’s not as reliable or flexible as IMAP or Exchange email services.

I suggest you take a look at Virginmedia‘s support pages to see if you have POP3 set up. Some providers offer IMAP as well, though it is not default. Switch if you can. You might want to consider switching email providers if you can not, for future reliability.

Also, there is usually a web bassed email client that you can access through your provider. Take a look there and see if you can find your emails. If it’s POP based, then your new folder won’t be there, but you may be able to access the old emailsl lin deleted (provided the server did not delete them after download.

If it’s an IMAP account, the folder will be there, and the emails will alslo probably be in it; sincee all email folders are stored on the server and only synced with remote devices.

 

[Willster]

Only one of my old accounts that I no longer use is POP3, all the others are IMAP. I don’t think I actually lost any emails at this stage, the iPad just can’t seem to accurately locate them. Crashing of the Mail app is also a bit worrying though.

 

[Willster]

I’ve just checked my mail on my ISP’s site and the new folder is there but I think it only contains the emails that I selected in small numbers and transferred. I think the mass transfer I originally did probably failed as on the iPad. Difficult or at least rather time consuming to check!

 

[twerppoet]

Yes. It sounds like those emails were lost. Sorry to hear that. There might be a way to recover some of those records on the PayPal site itself. Good luck.

 

[twerppoet]

One last thing you can try is to contact your provider’s support and see if they can recover the emails. They may have backups or other ways of resurecting old deleted emails. Can’t hurt to ask.