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email disappeared on Vodafone Smart 8

HMRobertson
2: Seeker
2: Seeker

Hi there,

 

Yesterday around 5pm I noticed that all but 9 of my most recent emails had disappeared from the email client on my Vodafone Smart 8.  I had emailed dating back from the start of April, important emails with holiday booking refrences and it is all gone.  I have checked through the email app and I can't find any archives option to check through.  I checked the trash and they were not in there - only the emails I had deleted myself.

I cannot find any other options in the settings that can reveal what has happened to my emails.  

Has a phone update done this?

 

Thanks, look forward to hearing some answers.

9 REPLIES 9

BandOfBrothers
17: Community Champion
17: Community Champion

This maybe down to the phones email app updating with your email providers servers.

 

This happens to my Note 9 too. 

My email is an imap type set up.

 

Come out of the app and log into your email login page via your internet browser and hopefully you'll find your emails still there. 

Current Phone  >

Samsung Galaxy s²³ Ultra 512gb Phantom Black.

 

 

Hi there,

 

Thanks for your respose.

 

I've already looked at my emails via a browser, and they are not there, because I download via POP3 onto Outlook on my laptop.

 

You think an update to my mobile phone email client app has caused this then?  The emails dated back to the start of April, so everything from then until 16 May just vanished.  I've had the Vodafone Smart 8 phone for a year and nothing like this has happened before.  I have copies of my emails on my phone, and on my laptop.  No problem - until yesterday 😞 

 

This has now made me think my phone is entirely unreliable.  I had lots of holiday booking confirmation emails on my phone - the beauty of technology that you don't have to be printing of such like anymore.  Or so I thought.  I can't trust this phone at all, so I am simply going to have to print everything from my laptop, which seems a bit ridiculous in this day and age 😞  

I cant be sure that an update did this - no.

 

I wouldn't think so.

 

A factory reset could if you didn't then use a back up.

 

But if your email is pop3 then your emails should still be on your email servers i.e. in your folders etc.

 

If this was my phone I'd delete the email account from the email app and set it up back again to see if that helps.

Current Phone  >

Samsung Galaxy s²³ Ultra 512gb Phantom Black.

 

 

My emails are not on the server - as I use POP3 on my laptop they are downloaded to the laptop, so I have them on my laptop, and on my mobile via IMAP.  I have had no problems until yesterday, so something has changed.

 

There are continuous updates to my mobile phone so who knows what is going on.

 

Deleting the account and setting up again would achieve nothing, as the emails are already gone, and cannot be downloaded again.  The only thing I can do is forward the emails using the laptop to myself and pick them up on the mobile.  But then, who knows how long they might last there fore they disappear again!

 

hrym
17: Community Champion
17: Community Champion

That's weird.  I use POP3 in Outlook to pull emails from Gmail on a PC and it's not possible to get that to delete form the server - when I used Yahoo, it would delete when I emptied the Outlook bin.  Although I have that set, it doesn't happen.   It's a faff having to do it manually in Gmail, but is also a useful belt & braces.

I don't know why the phone would delete and my initial thought was that this was a resource issue and that they simply weren't displaying.   That seems not to be the case.

Can we just check that you are indeed using Gmail?   if so, how are you accessing messages on the phone - is it via the Gmail app or the phone's proprietary one?   I'd recommend the Google one as all the settings are built in.   I very quickly stopped using a Samsung email app a long time ago as I found that, if I moved something to deletions accidentally, there was no way of getting it back and it would delete at next sync.

Hi there,

 

Thanks for your interest.  I am using Plusnet email, not GMail, through the Mail App that comes with the Vodafone Smart 8.

 

Thankfully there has been no repeat of the incident and I hope there will not be!

 

Cheers

hrym
17: Community Champion
17: Community Champion

Ah, right.   Yes, you would need to use the built-in app.   It certainly sounds like a one-off glitch, but I'd be inclined to try to back things up as much as you can until you're (reasonably) certain it isn't going to happen again.  If you're using Outlook, there should be local copies on the PC  - and for goodness sake make periodic copies of the .pst file!

I'm not a massive fan of ISP email as you're tied to it and lose it if you change provider.   It might be worth looking at having a Gmail address* and then getting that to pick up from your Plusnet account (it can do it automatically).   You can also set it to send as-from your Plusnet address if you want to, or just migrate organically (ie correspondents gradually pick up the new address).

*If you're using an Android device you'll have one, of course.   Just go into the settings ona PC and check out the send/collect options.

Thanks for that, of course I have back ups, its just the inconvenience of loosing the emails from my phone - it means I'll have to send to myself from my laptop to get them back on the phone.

AnnS
17: Community Champion
17: Community Champion

Hi @HMRobertson 

 

I suspect this may be connected with you downloading POP 3 onto Outlook on your laptop.

 

You don't mention if you have your emails synchronised to gmail, this way all your emails will be in one place and anything which comes in will be picked up by gmail and forwarded to your phone.  If you are using Outlook gmail mail works well and should be set up as IMAP.

 

To synchronise your mail this can be done by going into the account settings on your phone and selecting personal, IMAP > accounts and syn settings, account settings and add your email account to synchronise to gmail.

 

In the meantime, definitely try deleting the email box from your phone and setting it back up again, if there are any emails on the main server these should be picked up (as mentioned by @BandOfBrothers )