first we were unable to access our msn account for several days (from our Mac computer -- the windows computer could still access the account -- i gather this was a common occurrence in late october -- this appears to have been resolved) -- now the inbox has been erased for all e-mails before october 28th -- how can we get the old e-mails restored??  the ones we are looking for are not in the delete folder

Hi jp2,

So for us to help you, can you answer some of the ff:

1. When were the messages deleted?

2. Have you already looked in your "Deleted Mail" and/or “Junk Mail” folder? These are the places where deleted messages (even if you deleted a folder) go to, and if the messages hasn't been purged yet, you'd be able to recover those messages and re-create the folder where you stored them in the first place.

3. If you can't locate those deleted messages in your "Deleted" folder, can you provide us your exact e-mail address? We're going to need this to look into our records and see if we can make a recovery of those messages.

Please post back ASAP so we can help you with those missing messages.

Thanks

1) the MAC (but not windows) access to MSN failed around October 20th and came back around November 5th

2) the messages appear to have been deleted around November 1-5

3) there is nothing material or unusual in either the delete or junk mail folders

4) I would rather not post my e-mail address on a chat room (i have sent a feedback to msn and when i signed in of course i used my e-mail address so my e-mail should be findable by msn employees i would think)

Thanks for the info, jp2.  In order to recover your messages, we need to get your e-mail address. Don’t worry about posting your account because website is designed to automatically detect and hide e-mail addresses posted for privacy purposes.  They’re only viewable to the moderators and not the users. 

the e-mail address is

{removed email address}

Hi jp2.

I’ve checked your account and found that you’re accessing your e-mail using POP3 settings. There were messages that I’ve found in your Deleted folder and I've moved these back to your Inbox. I also tried to do a restoration but this didn’t work out. It’s highly possible that you left the “Leave a copy of messages on the server” option in your e-mail client program disabled; thus, you lost your messages in your online e-mail. Please review your settings. Your deleted messages should still be available in your e-mail client program so please check it out.

To make sure that you don’t lose your saved messages on the Web, keep the “Leave a copy of the message on the server” option in your e-mail client program enabled.

The Pop3 setting is probably blackberry or Microsoft office related...these files were lost while our MAC and I gather a lot of others could not access MSN...it sounds like MSN does not have any kind of backup system to recover files...obviously (given that I actually pay a monthly fee for this account as opposed to say a Gmail account), it is disappointing that data lost during a MSN service outage can not be retrieved

Hi jp2, we appreciate your feedback. I’ve checked your account and confirmed that it didn’t go under maintenance; thus, this didn't cause the deletion of your messages. If you’ve had issues in accessing your account using your Mac, it could be related to the reports that we’ve received from other members who are using Safari on their Mac. If this is also how you access your account, I'd like to let you know that this issue is under investigation and we recommend for you to try to use another browser to access your e-mail on Mac as a workaround.

As I’ve mentioned, you just need to toggle your settings in your Blackberry or Outlook e-mail client to make sure that the "Leave a copy of the message on the server” option is enabled. If this is enabled, copies that you download into these programs won’t be removed from your online e-mail’s mailbox.

So MSN does not keep back ups...and may not be compatible with Safari???

The purge of the MSN e-mails occurred once and cleaned away the (in box only) of e-mails before Oct 25th or so -- I did not change any of the blackberry etc settings in October 

I have to think this purge is an MSN issue and not a function of blackberry etc -- if it were a result of these programs then the purge would have started early and would be continuing

@ jp2,

Yes, we do not keep back-ups of messages on our servers. Based on the information you gave, (only the Inbox messages were deleted) the culprit has to be a POP3 setting and not an outage since POP3 usually exhibits this type of behavior.

Regarding your Safari inquiry, it is not that it is incompatible with Hotmail; we've only received reports that users (not all) are having issues accessing their accounts on this browser.