I've had my account for nearly 20 years. Where did all my emails go when it moved from hotmail - live/outlook. How can I recover my old emails ?

Question

I can remember Microsoft moved from Hotmail to outlook/live a few years back, and they deleted my emails.
Is there any way to retrieve them ?
There were many important receipts and documents among them that I'd like to recover, also some personal things and mails from people who have since passed that I'd like to see.

Answer 1

When Microsoft transitioned from Hotmail to Outlook, many users were able to retain their emails, but some may have experienced issues with missing emails during the migration process. If your emails were deleted or not migrated properly, there are a few steps you can take to try to recover them:

1. Check the Deleted Items Folder: Sometimes, emails may be in the Deleted Items folder. You can check this folder in your Outlook account.
2. Recover Deleted Items: If you can't find your emails in the Deleted Items folder, you can try to recover them using the "Recover Deleted Items" feature in Outlook. This feature allows you to recover items that have been deleted from the Deleted Items folder within a certain retention period.
3. Contact Microsoft Support: If the emails are not recoverable through the above methods, you may want to contact Microsoft Support for assistance. They may have additional tools or methods to help recover lost emails.
4. Use In-Place eDiscovery: If you are using an Exchange account, you can use In-Place eDiscovery to search for and recover deleted items, provided that the retention period for those items has not expired.
5. Check Other Devices: If you have accessed your email on other devices or applications, check those as well, as sometimes emails may still be available on those platforms.

Unfortunately, if the emails were permanently deleted and the retention period has expired, recovery may not be possible. It's always a good practice to regularly back up important emails to avoid such situations in the future.

Answer 2

Hi sean Callaghan, I completely understand how upsetting it is to lose years of important emails especially ones with personal memories and documents.

Start by signing in to Outlook.com and checking the Deleted Items folder for anything recoverable. If nothing shows up look for PST or OST files on your computer usually in Documents\Outlook Files and import them into Outlook. If you can’t access the account use Microsoft Account Recovery Form and if your backup files are corrupted try a recovery tool. Sadly if the account was inactive for years and purged your best chance is local backups or old devices that synced your emails.

Have you ever accessed your Hotmail account through Outlook desktop or another email client on any device? If so do you still have that device or any backup files like PST or OST saved?

Best regards

Lucky Charm