Windows 7 - Deleted email account

Asked By General Snags

25-Aug-10 02:11 PM

My wife uses Windows Vista, and Live Mail.  Under the direction of a Sky Help
Desk - when trying to get her email working having been locked out - was told
to delete her account underTools/Accounts.  Which she duly did.  Of course,
on setting up a reconfigured email account, she had lost a whole pile of
important emails.

Question: Is there a way to recover that account, or even just the emails?
Will they be backed up somewhere, or be recoverable in some way?

Many thanks.

Peter

25-Aug-10 02:19 PM

Presumably, this is a POP3 account and the option to Leave a copy of
messages on the server was not enabled so the old messages are no longer
on the server.

I am also guessing that you have not been backing up your mail
How to Backup Windows Live Mail Accounts, Contacts and Messages
http://liveunplugged.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!F92775FC46A390CA!174.entry

As the remove account dialog warned you, removing an account deletes all
the messages in those account folders on your PC.

If you were to install and run and Undelete utility looking for *.EML
files, you MIGHT recover SOME of the messages.  The more you use the Pc
before doing that, the less likely you will recover much.


--

Mike - http://TechHelp.Santovec.us

25-Aug-10 04:35 PM

In addition to what Michael responded, and only as a last resort,
you can try a file undelete utility, such as Recuva:
http://www.piriform.com/recuva

But frankly, the success rate is not very high, and it requires a =
certain
amount of tech-savvy to use that type of utility.

Gary VanderMolen, Microsoft MVP (Mail)
------------------------------------------------------


My wife uses Windows Vista, and Live Mail.  Under the direction of a Sky =
Help
Desk - when trying to get her email working having been locked out - was =
told
to delete her account underTools/Accounts.  Which she duly did.  Of =
course,
on setting up a reconfigured email account, she had lost a whole pile of
important emails.

Question: Is there a way to recover that account, or even just the =
emails?
Will they be backed up somewhere, or be recoverable in some way?

Many thanks.

Peter

25-Aug-10 05:32 PM

I think that is an APPALLING design flaw. I know of NO OTHER email client
(and I have used most of them from Pegasus to Eudora to Outlook to OE to
Thunderbird...) where removing an email ACCOUNT removes locally cached
email messages...

25-Aug-10 05:54 PM

You're preaching to the choir.
As a minimum, the account delete action should default to moving
the messages to a folder under Storage Folders.

Gary VanderMolen, Microsoft MVP (Mail)
------------------------------------------------------



all

I think that is an APPALLING design flaw. I know of NO OTHER email client
(and I have used most of them from Pegasus to Eudora to Outlook to OE to
Thunderbird...) where removing an email ACCOUNT removes locally cached
email messages...=20

25-Aug-10 06:14 PM

That's why you get a warning message which says quite clearly that that is what will happen. Ignore it at your peril, like so many other warning messages.
--
Noel

25-Aug-10 06:36 PM

If you have System Restore enabled, it is likely that one or more VSS
(Volume Shadow [Copy] Service) snapshots of your data exist, which were
made during Restore Point creation.

If you do not have Vista Business or Ultimate, you can install
ShadowExplorer to access them.

http://www.ShadowExplorer.com

25-Aug-10 08:48 PM

I think that is an APPALLING design flaw. I know of NO OTHER email client
(and I have used most of them from Pegasus to Eudora to Outlook to OE to
Thunderbird...) where removing an email ACCOUNT removes locally cached
email messages...

What is appalling is that the help desk did not say to backup first.

-- Ron Sommer
MS MVP- Windows Live Mail

25-Aug-10 07:07 PM

Now then would be good time to consider use of the Storage folders for archiving or an alternate backup strategy for emails.

--
...winston
ms-mvp mail




I think that is an APPALLING design flaw. I know of NO OTHER email client
(and I have used most of them from Pegasus to Eudora to Outlook to OE to
Thunderbird...) where removing an email ACCOUNT removes locally cached
email messages...

26-Aug-10 02:46 AM

True, but I cannot understand for the life of me WHY MS decided to
program that in.....

26-Aug-10 03:17 AM

A double "appal" then!

26-Aug-10 07:41 AM

Brent, thank you so much for that info. I have recently advanced from XP to Win7 Pro and after a few weeks, I am still only up to 'F' in reading through the help files.

Has anyone experience of restoring deleted mail folders in this way? I wonder how the database would react if only the deleted folders were restored; whether a re-start or two after restoring would bring them back into the fold, a re-indexation would be needed or the database would ignore them altogether... It would be possible, I suppose, to restore the entire message store, risking only the loss of whatever changes took place between deletion and restoration, but the other would be preferable if it could be made to work.

If no-one has tried it (because they never had to!), I suppose I could conduct some tests...
--
Noel

26-Aug-10 03:45 PM

It is an unavoidable side effect of having a 1:1 correspondence between
the account and its mail folders. Most other mail programs do not tie
a mail folder to a specific account.
Nevertheless, the account delete screen could easily have included a
pre-checked check box for moving the account's associated folders to
the Storage Folders.

Gary VanderMolen, Microsoft MVP (Mail)
------------------------------------------------------


that
warning

True, but I cannot understand for the life of me WHY MS decided to
program that in.....=20