Disappearing emails

[ap]

Twice within the last few days when I open Outlook on my desktop computer, all the emails in my Inbox disappear. Note, they disappear, not get deleted. I click on another folder, like Sent, then click back to Inbox and Outlook will re-synch with the server and re-download all the emails. Of course with thousands of emails, this takes some time.

Has anybody else had this happen?

Thanks

[Paladin]

Hi!

Are you fetching your emails using POP3 or IMAP? (ie how did you configure Outlook to get your emails).

What you describe is a very weird behaviour for POP3 which makes me think you could be using IMAP.

It could also be caused by having a view filter, please take a look at this:

https://techgenix.com/emails-disappear-outlook-inbox-after-being-read/

Good luck and have a nice day!

[ap]

Thanks for the reply.

I am using IMAP. I have confirmed that there is no filter set.

As I said, I had to click on another folder, like Sent, then clicked back on the Inbox folder. Outlook then immediately started to re-synch the folder and the emails began to reappear. But it wasn't like they were in the OST file, it was re-downloading them all. I know this because once when it happened, I shrank the data file first before re-synch, and it shrank by over 1.5 GB. So the emails definitely were wiped out and re-downloaded.

I am also having a similar, but to a much smaller degree, with my phone app. So I wonder if there is a problem on the Bell email server and some index pointer. 

[Paladin]

I am far from an expert with IMAP but the general idea is that the emails are kept on the servers...

I believe however that for performance reasons a copy of them is kept locally and resynched with the content on the servers...

If you said that the problem was only with Outlook I would think that there could be a possibility that something got corrupted in that local copy but the fact that you are seeing this behaviour elsewhere make me think that you might be right about the problem possibly being with the servers...

I have a question though, on your phone are you using IMAP as well or POP3? POP3, at least of what I have seen of it in the past, can be pretty unhappy about not being the only one reading the emails, I wonder what would happen if one of your clients was using IMAP and the other POP3...

POP3 usually removes emails from the servers so they would not usually be available for IMAP but you can usually disable this...

You would not happen to have another computer on which you could try replicate your Outlook setup to see if you can replicate the same problem by any chance?

Good luck and have a nice day!

[ap]

Hi,

I am using IMAP everywhere, on my phone, laptop and desktop. As you suggested, POP will delete the emails from the server unless you turn that off. 

And I did experience the complete disappearance of my Inbox messages twice on my desktop and once I my laptop. The weird part is that on my phone, and I don't use the Outlook app there I am using AquaMail, the Inbox only has either the most recent 100 emails disappear, or the most recent 1 email disappear. Then when I tell the app to refresh, they come back.

I am convinced it is something to do with the server side.

Thanks very much.

[BellPatricia]

Hi there. Great conversation going on here @ap  & @Paladin  🙂

@ap, are you experiencing the same issue when you log directly into our webmail? Bell email

We invite you to join the conversation over here as well New Webmail - Mail Filters and Folders Not Working Correctly where another user posted about emails not showing up in their inbox for a few hours.

Keep the Community posted on how everything is going.

- Patricia

[ap]

Hi Patricia,

No, Webmail doesn't seem to suffer from the same problem. 

[Cujo]

I'm having a problem with my email on my iphone, running ios 15.6. My read emails disappear from my inbox after about a week. any ideas?

[suds2022]

I have unread emails but I cant find them. 

[Rosy]

same for me