Where did it all go? (Computer related)

[Misanthropical]

The other night, my computer started compiling my email, which it has done before without a problem, but I noticed when it was compiling that another box came up and said "transferring files". That is all it said "transferring files"

Then, when I opened up my email all of my emails were gone! I asked my husband to look into it, but he couldn't find them either!

Does anyone know what is going on?

[Dreamstalker]

What email program are you using?

I've noticed Portable Thunderbird do that to me every once in awhile as well; not sure why.

What I did was go into the folder that held my profile*, and delete "Inbox.msf" (that file should be either 0 bytes or close to it; much smaller than the real Inbox file), then restart the program. I would strongly suggest double-checking this approach, as I've had it work on one email client and not another.

* Assuming a Windows computer, it should be in C:\Program Files\<email program>\profile\Mail (using my own as an example)

Or, if you have a recent backup you could just write that over the existing Inbox. I make a full backup of my email profile every few days for this purpose (simply copy the aforementioned profile folder onto a flash drive or similar).

[LostMyMind]

I've had that happen with outlook express once. Because I was being silly and didn't check the purge option.

Without knowing what email program you use, going to be hard to guess what happen. :(

[Misanthropical]

I'm using Outlook Express. I still can't find what happened to all the emails I was saving. :(

[LostMyMind]

If you didn't empty your trash can, the outlook express data files should still be there. You can put it back. If you did empty the trash can, you're pretty much out of luck.

My guess would be accidental move to the trash folder, which caused outlook to purge it.