Lost emails on BTconnect Exchange

[LZ]

Hi,

Two days ago I created a second email account on btconnect.com and I started having all sorts of problems. First the new account I created can't receive any emails. When I test from Hotmail or other accounts I get "Delivery to the following recipients failed."

Also I always keep a copy of my emails on the btconnect.com server as I have the "[x] Leave a copy of messages on the server" but when I checked today the server was clean as a whistle and I lost whole day worth of emails.

 Anyone faced a similar problem and is there a way to ask BT to restore the emails?

Thanks

LZ

[Fiona]

Hi

I am sorry to read you are experiencing problems with your secondary email account. Are you able to send and receive a test email from your BTconnect address to yourself? What is the exact error message you get back?

Is it the secondary email account that you lost all the emails from? If you have selected to leave the email on the server, you must be using Outlook or a similar program as well as the Webmail facility. Have you checked to see that the emails are not in Outlook, or in your Deleted or sent items? If you have not received any mail to this account due to the bounceback error people get when sending mail to that address, there will be no mail on the server. Or are you meaning the emails you have sent to people from that address are missing? If so, then these will be in the sent items of the program you used to send the mail from.

There are help and support files for troubleshooting email issues, you can also talk to the technical team.

Kind Regards

Fiona

BT Business Forum Moderator

[LZ]

Thanks, the case is closed now. 

BT answer: the emails wont be lost unless I remove them from the server my self and there is no way to recover them

MY answer: I didn't change my email client configurations and something went wrong after 5pm which removed the emailsl and they should do a bit of investigation to look into it.

[joeshelper]

Ok lets take this one issue at a time.

The second mailbox you set up - Your bounceback doesnt state the entire message. However from what I can see I would say your mailbox hasn't fully provisioned which is why the delivery is failing and your are unable to receive emails. Calll the helpdesk because if this is the case only they can help you and get it fixed.

Your emails going missing - Have you checked you mail client to ensure your settings still have leave a copy of message on the mailserver ticked. How long have you set this setting to keep the messages for? Could you have reached the expire time, did you download them onto another pc. If you have a phone you need to also set the phone to leave a copy of message on the server. The same applies to another pc.

There is another product called Business Email Plus which stores all your emails on the server all the time. You don;t pop the box  therefore no need to worry about leaving a copy of message on the server. You synchronize with the mailservers/your mailbox and you have a realtime view 24/7. You can choose to move mails onto your pc if you set up a .pst file.  It costs £5.99 per month I think. But worth looking into.

I have posted before about the benefits of Premium Business email. If you read this link it tells you all you need to know about the Premium Email service

http://business.bt.com/broadband-and-internet/internet-communication/business-email/features/

Hope this helps.

[LZ]

I'm not that worried about the new email account that doesn't work as no one know about it yet, par two, so I can live with that.

I'm %100 sure that my PC Outlook client have the "Leave a copy of message on the server" and I don't tick any of the "Remove after nn days" as I have another 3 accounts configured at the same way. Also every couple of months when I get the email saying your account is full I go into the webmail interface and remove old messages as I have them already downloaded to my PC

 I don't use any smart phone for emails as I'm hooked to internet all the time so no need for it. For the Business Email Plus it is a good idea and I will definitely get one but not with BT

[Fiona]

Hi LZ,

I am sorry to read that your mail problem is still not resolved. If I can just confirm exactly what has happened it may help to try and find an answer.

You have an email account which is set up in Outlook and set to leave a copy of the mail on the server. You have all your emails in Outlook, but when you went into the webmail, the webmail facility was empty (all folders including the sent and deleted).

You can confirm:

• that no one has access to the account and no one could, or would, have cleared this on your behalf because they were getting an error that the account was full.

• that all new mail, after the point that you went into the webmail and it was 'empty' is now showing there as well as being downloaded into your Outlook.

• that the mail is still available to view in outlook. Or did you delete the mail from outlook and it also was deleted from webmail. Or did you move the mail from the inbox to archive it, or another folder?

• that you only have this email account setup on 1 PC and someone hasn't tried or attempted to set it up on another PC/laptop.

I am not saying it is an impossibility that a mailbox is wiped clear, but it it unlikely that this has happened for no reason. The more information we have on this, the easier it will be for people on the forum to try and determine why this has happened. As joeshelper said in his post, the advanced email offers a synchronised webmail and outlook product and is designed for people that need to have their folders and calendar while they are on the move, so it would be worth looking into.

Kind Regards

Fiona

BT Business Forum Moderator

[LZ]

• No one has access to the account it is only used by me and the account wasn't full at the time even though I had about 400 emails in it but no attachments so they don't take much space

• During the day I send emails using the web interface and at night I launch Outlook to download them and file them away. but that night I wasn't getting any of the emails I sent and received during the day so I connected to the webmail interface and it was clean. Nothing in InBox, Sent or Deleted items. As I know when I send an email from the webmail it should be saved in the Sent.

• I only have one PC which is used for web, emails and Office documents, nothing else as I try to keep it as clean as possible

 One point you mentioned is the Sent folder on the webmail, that one should have the sent emails even if I downloaded and removed the emails from the server. But it was empty

Thanks

LZ

[Fiona]

Thanks

I have checked the account audit trail for your email address and can see the secondary email account being created, but no other account changes have been made after that which may have caused your email box to reset itself (or clear itself). I double checked to ensure that the emails were not sent from your primary BTConnect email account for broadband in error, as the email address's are very similar. 

Unfortunately i can't see any reason why the mailbox has reset itself, i'm really sorry. What i will do is ask for our technical team to have a look into this for you, to make sure i am not missing something. I'm afraid it is unlikely they will be able to recover the mail from the 24th.  If you can private mail me a contact name and number to add to the case.

Kind regards

Fiona

BT Business Forum Moderator

[LZ · Accepted solution]

Cheers Fiona for following this up.

 I had a call from customer services and I was told a problem DID occur on my email account which caused it to be wiped out, so everything that was in Inbox, Sent, Deleted and Drafts is gone and there is no way to get it back.

 The good news is I had a copy of them on my machine at home but I lost 20+ emails that I sent and received on the day when the problem occurred.

 As my email is critical for my business I signed up for a hosted paid for email service with another provider for £12.95 a month. It is more expensive than BT but they have 24x7 customer support i.e.. no more we're closed on Sunday. and they have a guarantee to pick up my call in few minutes.

 So I will gradually be moving my contact details to the new email address and keep my finger's crossed it wont happen again

LZ

[Fiona]

Hi

Thanks for coming back to me on this. I'm really sorry we couldn't have had a more positive outcome but i'm glad that we did find out what was going on, and you have been able to make plans for your business emails.

When moving your emails and contacts across to your new email address, you can look at setting up an email forwarding to ensure you don't miss any emails. You can also set up an out of office assistant to send a message to the emails you receive, with details of your new contact. You also have email accounts associated with your BT Business Broadband connection. It is worth keeping an eye on the primary email account as this is where we send information about Broadband and your account. You could set up a forward on these email accounts to your new email address to ensure you don't miss any news, offers or updates.

I hope you get on ok with the move of your email account, and continue to visit us on the forum.

Kind Regards

Fiona

BT Busines Forum Moderator