Critical Data Corruption on Legacy @msn.com Account - Missing Emails prior to 2015 & "SPOOLS" Error

Question

Hi, I have been using my @msn.com account for 20 years. I recently discovered that all my emails prior to 2015 have vanished.

When I use advanced search for the year 2008, I see hundreds of empty entries labeled as "[Draft] [Unknown]" with a "SPOOLS" tag. There is no subject, no preview, and no content. This account has been active for two decades, so this is not an inactivity issue.

It looks like a server migration or database corruption error from the Hotmail-to-Outlook transition era. I need a Microsoft engineer to investigate my legacy mailbox data.

Answer 1

If it was an error during migration, it is too late to fix it as migration to Exchange online was 10 years ago. Sorry.

Are the messages in a mail folder or in the Drafts folder?

Did you go more than 1 year without logging into the account? The mailbox is purged if you do. That could account for the missing mail.

Did you use a 3rd party email client - including Outlook Express or classic Outlook - to access the mailbox? If so, and you use POP, the messages could have been deleted from the server by the pop client.

Also note that mailbox size was 500 MB originally and later increased to 1 GB, 5 GB and finally 15 Gb after the move to Exchange online. Many users needed to delete mail from the server to make room for new mail.