topic Re: Can I save my emails from being lost? in Email and hosting

Can I save my emails from being lost?

magz — Fri, 27 Jan 2023 16:03:23 GMT

Same issue as many others that have posted on here the last few weeks. Have domain emails hosted by BT, use outlook on the desktop, can no longer do this.

We have several email addresses for different users and some access their emails in a different way.

Personally I was desktop outlook all the way, I had a physical product key as bought outright. Most others are the same, albeit with slightly different versions of outlook.

For the most of us, we can back up our mailbox . pst files which can be imported back in once everything is changed (although I'm not sure why you'd lose these emails as they are downloaded to desktop outlook)

The only issue we face is the last few weeks of emails that have only been accessible on the Web version of outlook. The advice is to forward these to a different email account so we don't lose them. I don't know how many emails we might be talking about per user, but it should be doable.

Then we have the one oddity who accesses their emails using the windows mail app. So none of their emails have ever been downloaded to a desktop outlook and therefore there is no file to save.

They've not confirmed yet but my guess is they will have a large number of emails that need to be kept and its just not practical to forward every single one.

How do I make sure they don't lose all their emails?

Please help!

Thanks

Re: Can I save my emails from being lost?

Brime1957 — Mon, 30 Jan 2023 05:26:42 GMT

Hello,

You can save your emails being lost by

Be sure to check these folders if you can't find what you're looking for. If you find the email in a folder it shouldn't be in, just move it back to your inbox, label it accordingly and be sure to whitelist that contact so that emails from them don't get lost again.

Re: Can I save my emails from being lost?

SamG — Mon, 30 Jan 2023 13:34:26 GMT

Hi magz,

Thanks for your post - I'm sorry to hear about the issues you're facing.

I've reached out to a member of the team handling the email migrations to advise on how to back up emails using the Windows mail app rather than Outlook. I'll be back in touch once I have a response.

Thanks,

^SamG

Re: Can I save my emails from being lost?

TillyFlo — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 14:00:57 GMT

think both the above have missed the point.

The webmail inbox & Sent items is the one you want to save and download???? not the desktop ones as that is easy.

No idea how but I need to do it too.

Thanks

Re: Can I save my emails from being lost?

magz — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 14:15:19 GMT

I'm hopeful that SamG will find some sort of solution, however I have been chatting with BT today and they can't seem to understand the predicament. They all think it's as simple as saving the desktop emails, but are not considering the emails that have been coming in since 16th Jan (when the issue started for us) only to the webmail.

I was told in the same chat, I can access the emails on the webmail. And also told I will lose all emails when I delete the account (which I have to do to move it over to office365 as an exchange account). When I suggested that was as much use as a chocolate teaspoon, they told me there was nothing else could be done as it's already turned off. I mean, I know this, that is why I would expect them to have a solution.

What do they plan to do for all the thousands of customers that are paying £149 per 5 accounts to have this done professionally. Will they just lose all these emails since 16th Jan (or whichever date they were affected) or do BT have an actual way of keeping them and getting them moved into the new email account with office365?

Frustrated doesn't cover it, I expect you are going round the same circles as me.

Re: Can I save my emails from being lost?

SamG — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 10:57:07 GMT

Hi magz,

Thank you for your patience.

I've spoken with our IT team regarding your query. There are some instructions in the image below for how to save emails from the Windows Mail app:

The advice given by IT is to now use webmail until the migration is completed.

^SamG

Re: Can I save my emails from being lost?

magz — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 16:05:29 GMT

Hi Sam

I've not come across an option to save but I will check again. I assume they are suggesting I have to do it for each individual email and can't save them in bulk?

As far as using webmail goes, this is what we're now doing, however I don't see a way of saving emails from there either. My understanding is that when I delete the current domain email addresses which are hosted by BT that the mailboxes will dissappear and I'll not be able to retrieve old emails. Using webmail means accessing emails direct from the server, if that gets removed, then the emails are not saved anywhere to refer back to. So is there a solution to ensure that the emails that we've recieved since using webmail can be retrieved once the domain mailboxes are moved over to Microsoft?

From what i can gather, when I migrate the email domain to Microsoft and create the email addresses again, none of the past emails will move over. If that is correct, then how can I find a way to keep the emails we've received since using webmail?

I'd have expected there to be a simple solution to this, but I'm not sure anyone understands what I'm asking.

I'd appreciate any more advice you can pass on.

Thanks

Re: Can I save my emails from being lost?

mchuta1 — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 22:09:54 GMT

For more than 15 years I managed email with Outlook on the office PC (paid, licensed product).

Periodically backup PST file to archive device.

I had control of my own archive.

I routinely delete messages from the Microsoft Server after they have been read.

This worked well until 31 January 2023.

How can I continue using Outlook on the PC and maintain my own archives without complicated forwarding?

Re: Can I save my emails from being lost?

magz — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 08:51:32 GMT

If this is to do with the pop server being turned off then it's the same issue I'm facing. Ours turned off on 16th Jan and have had to use webmail since then.

Only solution I know to get back to using outlook on your pc is to upgrade your emails to an exchange account. This involves buying Microsoft licences for each email address, removing the emails from being hosted by BT (and subsequently deleting all mail in all mailboxes) and migrate them into Microsoft as the new host. All at a minimum monthly cost of £4.90 per user. BT can do the work for you, however this will cost another £149 per 5 users and when I asked about it 2 weeks ago, it was going to be 1st June before they scheduled it in.

I'm doing it myself this weekend, but still want to know how to save the emails that have only been available online since 16th as you can't archive them the same as from the pc.

Re: Can I save my emails from being lost?

TillyFlo — Wed, 08 Feb 2023 16:49:02 GMT

How did you get on at the weekend?????

Struggling here too.

Re: Can I save my emails from being lost?

magz — Thu, 09 Feb 2023 11:42:10 GMT

Hi TillyFlo

It was a long weekend!! I have literally just got everyone set back up this morning after added issues along the way.

But, I found a way to save emails from the online mailbox. Bit of a faff as maximum of 50 emails at a time (unless you pay and you can probably get more) but as it was only for a few weeks it wasn't too bad for me.

First thing, I downloaded Mozilla Thunderbird. It's another email program. Set up your office 365 email account - there was something called 'Owl' that was required as an add-in (can't remember what it was for, but it worked) incoming server - outlook.office365.com

Once it was set up then mailbox will download.

Next you can save bulk emails, so I went to the date when it all went wrong (16th Jan) and all emails since then I highlighted, right click and save as - choose a destination folder.

They will each individually save as .eml files

I then downloaded - Cigati EML Converter which can change .eml files to .pst files

I'll not go through the whole process of using that program, you can work your way through it and suss out how it works. But it's fairly self explanatory. Just remember you can only select up to 50 emails at a time to convert, if you select more it will only do the first 50. Once the .pst emails are saved, they can be imported into your desktop outlook.

Like I say, it's a bit of a faff, but it works and I was desperate for anything to work.

Hope that helps you - can give oyu a bit more details if you get stuck at any point.

🙂

Re: Can I save my emails from being lost?

jaybee69 — Fri, 24 Feb 2023 10:55:17 GMT

Big thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I've tried many options to get the mail from the BT Business Lite email system before coming across this.

Thunderbird and OWL was the key. OWL is an add-in that allows a connection to Exchange/Office 365 as though you are using webmail.

Rather than using the EML converter, I set up a free OUTLOOK.COM email address and added this to Thunderbird.

I was then able to copy/move emails between the BT and OUTLOOK.COM email accounts.

I then added the newly created OUTLOOK.COM account to the desktop version of Microsoft Outlook from which you can then create an archive/backup .PST file that can be used for import into your new email account.

If needed, you can get a free trial of Office 365 to complete this task.

The advantage to this method is that you can transfer thousands of emails at a time rather than being restircted to the 50 limit of the Cigati EML converter.

Again, many thanks as without this I've a few customers who would have been faced with loosing all of their emails

Re: Can I save my emails from being lost?

TillyFlo — Mon, 27 Feb 2023 11:02:10 GMT

am about to give it a whirl I will report back. Thanks

Re: Can I save my emails from being lost?

TillyFlo — Mon, 27 Feb 2023 16:00:20 GMT

Brilliant 👏👏

You two are super stars.

I set up thunderbird and OWL (BT ACCOUNT) then added my gmail account and just coppied and pasted it all over result!

I have one question, how can you get thunderbird to automatically send emails from one inbox to another as the mail forwarding via BT wont work OBVS extra grateful for help so far and being able to move emails to a suitable place.

Thanks again

Re: Can I save my emails from being lost?

magz — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 08:55:47 GMT

So pleased I was able to help you and glad you managed to find a quicker and easier way of copying the emails!

I've never used Thunderbird before this, so don't know exactly what it can do. I did try to do this also, but couldn't find a solution, something like setting up a rule would be able to do it, but I can't see any option to set up rules.

Since I have migrated my emails into microsoft, I can set up email forwarding so it's not causing me any issues now.

Re: Can I save my emails from being lost?

jaybee69 — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 20:16:40 GMT

You may be able to do this using filters in Thunderbird.

Press ALT to display the Menu bar

Click Tools, Message filters

Click New

Give the rule a name

Uncheck Run manually

Select Match all messages

Under Perform these actions, select Copy and select the Mailbox and folder you would like to forward the message to

Click OK

Note that in order for this to work, you need t have ThunderBird running.

Ideally you would want to use the BT side to forward it automatically, but I agree with you it doesn't work correctly.

Like Magz, mine was more about getting the emails backed up so that we could migrate to a new Exchange

account

Re: Can I save my emails from being lost?

JOC — Sun, 11 Jun 2023 08:44:56 GMT

Hi, I am in exactly the same situation. I have been using POP mails through BTBusiness with a hosted domain and business email account and using desktop Outlook to download the emails to my desktop. As with everyone above I have been absolutely appalled by the move to remove the ability to download the emails to my own computer system. Yes, as demonstrated above, if you open an email in browser Outlook you can click the 3 dots and download it to the downloads folder on your computer as a .eml file and then open it in desktop outlook. However, that is only one email at a time, I am sitting with a busy business and have already filled the 0.95 GB which is the pathetic amount space which we have all been given. As with you all I have a business critical need to get ALL my emails downloaded off the server and it won't work doing it one email at a time. All my records are within my emails I used Outlook to search my email database. The Thunderbird route above does appear to have worked for those above, so I will give it a try, though it sounds rather complicated. However, given the amount I already pay BT for domain and email hosting and internet as a business I think it is a real kick in the teeth that they have automatically moved their valued client onto the bigger email system by default which would have meant we could have continued to have downloaded our emails as we have all been used to doing. BT - this sucks, big time!

Re: Can I save my emails from being lost?

RichardK — Tue, 27 Jun 2023 12:15:31 GMT

I totally agree with JOC that I did NOT expect two large global technology companies to dump this un-announced on the business community. I totally get (and agree) that moving away from PoP is a good thing but BT have migrated a massive customer base of serious business users onto a platform that does not meet their needs. I would expect Microsoft and BT to have communicated about this way before it was dumped ceremoniously onto a very valuable customer base.