I logged into my Windows Live email account yesterday only to find all my email deleted. Not even a single solitary spam message left. I should be livid. Should be tearing what little hair I have left out of my head.
Instead I am simply moderately furious!
Why? Well this is not the first time Microsoft decided to delete all the email from my (then Hotmail) account. So I learned after losing valuable email the first time, not to trust any important email to Microsoft.
What makes it more annoying is that if Microsoft allowed POP access to Live Mail accounts, the way Gmail does, you would be logged in every time you fire up your email client app and you would have a local backup of your mail. But Microsoft won’t do that. Why? Because that might be useful?
After the first time I lost all my email, I didn’t trust Live Mail with any important email so this time I didn’t lose anything valuable. I kept the account because a few old domains are pointed at the email address.
Now, however, I will simply not use Live Mail for anything. I will switch the domains to point at a reliable email service.
Microsoft have a huge image problem. They are perceived as deeply uncool. Vista hasn’t helped this at all. But Windows Live is the public face of Microsoft. When Windows Live does things like ensures people can’t download their email, and then deletes it without warning, it is no wonder that Microsoft is considered yesterday’s company.
That really is a gargantuan Epic Fail.
I’d redirect everything to Google Apps and get the hell out of that town pretty snappy… If Gmail starts mass-deleting email on sight then we all have far bigger problems.
Really Sad Situation!
I cannot think of anything if my mails were deleted. It looks like new email is formed with the old one. May be from yourname@hotmail.com to yourname@live.com.
Not trying to defend their actions, but if you use their desktop e-mail client - Windows Live Mail - then you can access your Hotmail mail from your desktop.
I do that myself for my domain’s e-mail which is hosted by them.
Just not sure whether I’m still supposed to manually log in at least once every 6 months…
I’ve been using Hotmail for ages now, simply because I’ve got an address I like (and gmail doesn’t have the same one available so I can’t simply switch across…)
Then again, it might be worth the hassle of emailing my contact list and changing all of my registration details, if only to have the peace of mind that all of my emails won’t get deleted!
I’ll be backing up my emilas now anyway…
Sorry to hear for your loss, Tom
You should have known better and use either Yahoo! or Gmail…
Hotmail had a policy that you had to login once every 30 days to keep the account active. If you failed to login the account was deemed inactive and all emails were deleted. After this, if you logged in within a certain time of which I’m unsure, possibly 6 months, you could reactivate the account but it would be empty. Is it possible that this policy is still in place and that you did not login within a 30 day timespan?
you have my sympathy. logged on today to two old hotmail accounts and everything has disappeared. i don’t understand it. i have used them infrequently for years and everything has been fine. now all gone. sad….
Such a pain. I’ve recently had the same experience with the Hotmail account I had for 9 years. All my old emails (with tonnes of sentimental value) are now gone forever. I got on to them about it and they emailed back explaining the following:
* After 60 days without signing in, all mails are deleted.
* You account stays active for 120 days.
* After 365 days your Windows Live ID will be deleted
I would be less upset if the entire account was deleted! It’s so infuriating to log in to your account and find it empty. It felt like a huge invasion of privacy, like somebody snuck into my account overnight and stole all of my emails. It creates a complete lack of trust…
Aua!
That´s a real bad thing, loosing all conversations, would be “nice” at my german emailprovider web.de, there are about 5.8 GB of mails and other things stored online (I´m in there since several years.)…
I feel with you!
Johannes
netjobbers.de
Disaster! Nothing worse than losing your mails, I lost over a gig of mails for 24hrs (Hardware failure) - what a nightmare…
Thats a tough thing. I managed to find a contact in Microsoft tech support that was able to help me out and recover my mail when ths happened to me. Did you try escalating to their online support team?
I found this page by googling to see whether the same thing has happened to others. I logged in to find that 8 years of e-mail are gone. I am at a loss, as there were a lot of old things that I would liked to have kept, for posterity mostly. Is there any way I can recover this?
You can use Thunderbird to access Hotmail/Windows live accounts - that’s what I’ve done and I have local copies of everything.
i feel your pain, this happened to me as well. i need to find an old email toshiba sent me to verify a purchase, i logged into my account only to find that everything had been wiped clean, drove me nuts!
J
I can honestly say that moving to Vista was one of the worst things that I ever did. Mainly because it is one of the worst products I’ve ever used. Sorry about your email troubles - I’m gmail all the way.
want to restore all contacts anm emails from live account
Dark side of FREE mail accounts…
hoster does not take any responcibility for your data.
Hi.
Are you sure WLM do this ? I use alot of POP3 software but prefer MS outlook.
By the way thanks for your friendfull share.
Omer KARADENIZ
MCITP
Blog: http://www.omerkaradeniz.com
my god!
i have no idea how to get my emails back! i have tried every possible thing and i’ve ended up here! i have a friend i’ve been in contact with only thru emails.. now i dont even have his email address! if there’s anything anyone knows about how to get those emails back it would be a blessing…
Yeppers, got MicroShafted too…
Opened my Live Hotmail today and discovered that I had only the most recent message (1!) in my inbox!!!!
All this web 2.0 stuff..forget it, I’m sticking with local storage and apps.
Fortunately I use Thunderbird with web mail extensions to access and store my web mail accounts locally.
I hate live mail, it just gets spammed 24/7, it’s is better than it used to be a few years ago but it is no where near as good as Gmail.
Also with my Gmail accounts I make sure I download all the emails via pop3 so I know I always have a copy and because there is some much space provided with gmail I can leave all the emails on the server incase my local copy is lost!
You’ve got the point all wrong, that is a *feature* of Live Mail. It’s to keep you on your toes, reading and responding to email right away.
Never understood why people use free email services for their important emails… first of all - aren’t you afraid of your privacy? Secondly - don’t blame others if the free services breaks. Get an own domain and email server instead for 2 Euros a month!
Had the same thing happen to me. All my Outlook Express e-mails suddenly flipped into Windows Mail at a click of a button, and poof all the 2007 and 2008 e-mails are gone. 2005 and 2006 are all intact!
Anyone one out there that can tells us all how to retrieve the lost e-mail?
My inbox shows 550 mails, with 76 unopened…. I can see the 76 on the screen, but the 550 are nowhere to be found. HAve searched for days.
DESPERATELY need to access these old e-mails. HELP !
Oh I feel your pain. The same thing happened to me but with Yahoo a few months back. I had about 300 emails in my inbox and woke up to find them all gone. I frantically sent an email to yahoo, and managed to get a reply several days later and was informed that deletion on inboxes was standard practice! What?! Managed to get the imprtant emails back though, thank god.
I used Windows Live because I wanted to copy all my e-mails to my normal ISP account so that I could bulk forward them. I cut and pasted them from Hotmail to my other e-mail account and the whole lot disappeared into the ether! VERY ANNOYING because they were for a legal dispute. Surely if they don’t cut and paste correctly they should just remain in the original Hotmail account, but NOPE apparently that is not a sensible option as far as Microsoft is concerned. I’m stopping using Hotmail for anything other than my junk mail address!
This really sucks! I had same thing happen to me..logged into my hotmail account and found everything was deleted! WTF?
I am a relative novice to the technical jargon. I use incredimail in my computer and through this I send,receive and store emails. I have been informed free access to my free hotmail account from my incredimail may soon cease (supposedly in june 2008 but still working at present - maybe because I refuse to download vista?)but separately there is an invitation to download WINDOWS LIVE MAIL for free. I am worried after all I have read here. Does this do the same job as incredimail or is it just some kind of desk top shortcut link?
I have tons of important stuff stored in the incredimail and occasionally visit the hotmail site just to clear everything out or to work on when incredimails accasionally says it cannot access hotmail.
Do I need to back up all my incredimail on a disk every day just in case it dies?
Any simplified advice as to how I may best continue with my (so far) happy life with incredimail and hotmail would be very greatfully received.
I can not tell you just how much I hate you people at Live. anything. You keep screwing up my e-mail, my messanger as well as all my e-mail addresses. i HOPE THAT YOU ALL ——–. i AM SURE THAT YOU HAVE RECIEVED MANY SUCH E-MAILS IN THE PAST AS EVERY PERSON THAT i KNOW HAVE EXPERIANCED PROBLEMS SINCE BECOMING INVOLVED WITH YOU. yOUR SERVICE sucks. I wish that I could use another systom but it seems that I am stuck with you idiots. I hate you people with a pasion.
SOLUTION: I uninstalled Windows Live Mail and my previously deleted Yahoo mail went into Outlook 2003 where I could forward them back to myself. As a backup, I had previously emailed them all at once to myself and then File Save Attachments to my computer.
same happened to me very recently. I used to login once every 3 or 4 months, no problem. On July 2008 they deleted everything and just kept that annoying “Welcome Email”. I will never trust microsoft online with anything
I HATE hotmail. I am getting married in 2 weeks and went into my hotmail to get all the super old ‘first emails’ from my fiance to give to the best man and…. ALL GONE! I am so depressed. I feel like the entire history of our relationship is gone. All I have left is whats in my mind but emails from 3 years ago aren’t the easiest to recall!
*sigh* I am NEVER using hotmail again.
30 days, 60 days whatever the hell it is who gives a stuff… you could be in hospital for that long, you could have broken all your fingers, you could be in a detention centre somewhere, you could be kidnapped, you could be overseas and you still deserve to keep all your all emails… and you can’t even save them onto your harddrive. They are stuck in hotmail like a time bomb waiting to explode and send little tiny fragments of your personal life and memories into cyberspace never to be found again
Hey guys…. it’s obvious that lots of us are having trouble retrieving lost e-mail from this long train of major complaints about Windows Mail, Hotmail, etc. But, surely there must be some major, clever dude out there that know how to resolve this problem and help is all out.
This is a call for HELP to those who have the knowledge to assist, not just a major dumping ground of complaints that goes on and on and on. Believe me, i feel your pain. I HATE Windows Mail, just like the rest of ya!
So, here it is again…I’m asking for URGENT help for ALL the people on this website who desperately need assistance with LOST E-MAIL, so this chain of complaints won’t continue forever until the end of time. Someone out there must have the answer!! Some clever technician who knows much more about computers than the rest of us. Where are you?
So, sorry guys; abit of advice from a life coach here … One has to ask for what one wants, rather than continuing to complain about it forever. Let’s get together as a group and help resolve this issue. Any of you know a technician that you can direct to this site? Someone who can respond in a timely manner, as Katie is getting married in a few weeks. She really doesn’t need the added stress! :O)
Suzanne
Suzanne,
It’s nice of you to be concerned about getting a solution before my wedding but
a) like the rest of you my emails are gone forever and theres nothing that can be done
b) I have switched to gmail which is only marginally better but at least it doesn’t delete all your stuff or not yet anyway
c) I have made many ’suggestions’ to the Windows Live Hotmail team for those of you still trying to live with hotmail. I told them that they need to have easy access to information that tells people that not only can they delete stuff at their leisure if you don’t sign in but what ’signing in’ actually means eg. you can’t just go through Windows Live Messenger like I mistakenly believed! And that they need to have a function whereby you can save the emails you want to your computer and finally
d) I have realised that although those emails meant a lot to me they don’t really matter now in the long run. I am getting married in 4 days and what really matters is right now. If I was living 30 years ago and writing letters and my house burnt down in a bushfire I would have lost all the letters and had to move on. Anything that you completely trust to technology and the internet and a bunch of bozo’s in little cubicles with nothing better to do than delete peoples private emails while the scoff down Krispy Kreme Doughnuts can’t be that important to your ultimate direction in life or you would have printed it out or copied it into a diary. Well I will from now on. Live is about change and maybe losing all those emails was a good thing. I don’t need to dwell on the past. I have the future.
Sorry for getting all philosphical on you all but I just think that the best thing we can all do it move on. We aren’t getting those emails back but we will all be smarter with our email from now on! And if there’s someone out there who can find a better way of emailing I will be all for it!
Is any one else having trouble getting into their live.co.uk addresses at the moment??? I keep getting error on page. Have been trying on and off all week and cant get in. Any ideas gratfeully received.
is that hotmail suck?
i thought can both. i have one windows live email. microsoft won’t delete all my email saved forever. i called hotmail: stop deleting all my keeping contact. i like hotmail for personal but now i’m gmail all the way to stuff.
that’s better hotmail is designed color.
It’s cool live email!
Are you serious? *sarcastic* - what else do you expect its MS.
Summary: Get a Gmail
I got so fed up with the “Windows” scene that I changed over to Mac. OK, I still use Windows for some things - but everything of any importance goes via Apple Mac
I am NEVER using hotmail again
To recover mail deleted at the server would be pretty clever!
I don’t like to entrust my files to a remote location so I use Windows Live Mail on which I have set up an account for my Hotmail
Incoming Hotmail is then stored as .eml files at
C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail\Hotmail\Inbox
(assuming you OS is on C)
and I can easily backup any vital info by simply copying the file(s) to another drive. In fact I backup the whole Windows Live Mail folder and its subfolders in one drag & drop, having already deleted everything I don’t want to keep.
I agree that is a horrible result (and yet another in a long run of bad news for Microsoft). I basically don’t like trusting anyone with that. I use Gmail and love it in many ways but I don’t trust Google to take as much concern over my emails as I do either (though I do trust them more than Microsoft).
You’ve just illustrated one of the reasons why I won’t use Windows Live email client; I love the google facilities (and many of the other facilities which google’s offering). The best solution for me is to use one of my own pop3 email accounts as a throwaway so that I can use it and move on if the level of spam gets out of control. At least I have the opportunity then of saving the emails that I want to keep.
Once again windows deletes valuable information no warning just delete as they go i run my home business from a hotmail account that i have had for 11 years there was a lot of important information stored in the old emails that is lost forever wont be happening again its off to gmail for me
happend 2 me too
it deleted my important 1s
I would be extremely angry. I have some very important emails in my account and this would not bode well with me at all. I agree that Microsoft has really slipped and they still continue to stay on top. They need to make sure to pay better attention to details behind the scenes and stop worrying about making their products look state of the art.
Exactly the same thing happened to me! AND it wasn’t the first time either. I would be furious if I thought about all the emails and contacts that are completely lost, but now I am just going to badmouth Windows Live Hotmail forever and stick with my gmail.