Missing Hotmail notes when removing and re-adding Hotmail account to iPhone

Question

Hi.

Yesterday my hotmail account was not receiving mail. When I forced a sync in the mail app, I was prompted to re-enter my password for my Hotmail account. I entered the correct password but log in failed with an error due to IMAP. I attempted to use the Microsoft Authenticator 2 step verification and when I requested that the code be sent to the phone number on my profile, the next prompt was that Authenticator could not be used at this time.

I could not receive or send any mail. I was concerned I had been hacked so I searched online what to do in this case. AI suggested that I delete the mail account and re-add it and log back in.

I did this, but all of my hotmail notes that i have had for years were deleted and I have tried everything to try to retrieve them as I saved a lot of my important information in them.

Is there any way to recover these deleted notes?

Answer 1

Removing and re‑adding the Hotmail/Outlook.com account on an iPhone does not delete data from the Outlook.com servers; it only removes the account configuration from the device. Notes or other items are only recoverable if they still exist somewhere in the mailbox on the server or in a recoverable state.

To check whether anything is recoverable, use Outlook.com in a web browser (not the iPhone Mail app):

1. Check regular folders
   • Sign in to Outlook.com.
   • Look through the standard folders (Inbox, Archive, any custom folders) for items that might correspond to the missing notes. In some setups, “notes” are actually stored as mail items.
2. Check Deleted Items
   • Open the Deleted Items folder and look for any items that match the missing notes.
   • If found, select the item(s) and choose Restore to move them back to their original folder.
   • On mobile (Outlook for iOS/Android or browser), you can move items from Deleted Items back to Inbox using Move to folder > Inbox.
3. Check recoverable items
   • If the notes are not visible in Deleted Items, at the top of that folder select Recover items deleted from this folder.
   • If the notes appear there, select them and choose Restore.
4. Be aware of recovery limits
   • Items removed from Deleted Items are only recoverable for 30 days.
   • After that period, or if the items never reached the server (for example, if they were stored only locally on the iPhone under the Hotmail “Notes” account), Outlook.com cannot restore them.

If the notes do not appear in Deleted Items or in Recover items deleted from this folder, and there is no other backup (such as a device backup from before the account was removed), there is no supported way in Outlook.com/Microsoft services to recover those deleted notes.

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References:

• Email is missing from your Outlook.com inbox