Home

Lucky Escape from deleted emails

Details

Written by: admin

Category: IBC

Published: 18 November 2022

Hits: 420

Lucky escape from deleted sent mail

Recently, I created a domain mail for taking up an assignment. My hosting provider did not have cPanel but some other solution. All worked well till some time. I realised that the sent mails are not syncing to my mobile. So, I investigated the issue. I found that there was a folder named "sent items" in the list of folders under that domain mail.

I tried to rename the folder "sent" to "sent items". But it did not allow me to rename.

By the way, I am using Samsung mail in a Galaxy mobile. I was using Outlook for Android at first. But Outlook for Android did not allow me to pull down the notification and mark the mails as "read" without going to the Outlook. Hence I switched to Samsung mail. Now, this mail allows me to pull down the notification and I can mark the mail as read or delete the mail.

Coming to the present issue, since I could not rename "sent" folder, I assumed that in case I delete the "sent items" folder in the Samsung mail, I could force the mail to sync to "sent" folder. Hence, I deleted the "sent items" folder. It did not work. I once again created "sent items" folder. Now, there are two "sent items" folders. Further, no sent mails appeared in the "sent items" folder which were there earlier before deletion of that folder. Since it was getting late, I slept, thinking that i might have to rename the Outlook folder in my laptop and then, the earlier sent mails would come back into the mobile in the "sent items" folder.

I woke up the next day. Remembering that I need to rename the Outlook folder, I opened the laptop and opened Outlook and navigated to the "sent items" folder. While I could see many mails in the folder, they immediately disappeared upon sync with the server.

Then I realised that my sent mails were gone. Now, they would be required if I wanted to produce them before the Tribunal.

I straightaway went to my hosting login. There, I searched folders upon folders and also the trash and bin folders. The deleted mails were nowhere to found. I even searched online as to how to retrieve lost mail folders. But all such results were for cPanel only, which my hosting provider didn't have.

For half an hour, I was in despair and was tensed up and frantically searching the hosting account file manager and also search results. Then I remembered that I had taken a Google drive paid subscription for 100 GB. I had set up sync for all important folders in my laptop to the Drive. If I upgraded my laptop to a higher configuration, I could simply download the folders from the Drive and I am good to go.

But there was only one problem. Drive sync was somewhat slow. Compared to the work I do, the Drive used to sync some folders with a delay of one day. Then, I got hope. Immediately I shut down my laptop to prevent syncing of the outlook data file. Then, I took my mobile and opened the Drive app and navigated to the outlook data file folder. There, the data file was updated one day ago. Means I am saved!

I downloaded the outlook data file into my mobile. Then opened my laptop again. I disabled wifi from the login screen itself to prevent any Drive sync. Transferred the old data file in my mobile to desktop of my laptop through bluetooth. I copied the data file again from desktop to outlook data file folder. It already found a file with the same name. I opted to replace the file in the destination.

Then I opened my outlook in the laptop and there all the sent mails were there. I first archived them and copied to sent folder as well.

It's a luck that this happened. It shows me that even if the backup is one day old, still it does the job perfectly. May be one day work will be gone but there will be two versions of the same file in case some mishap occurs.