Sudden disappearance of saved emails?
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Checking Vivaldi webmail folders today and found tons of past emails missing. Not everything has vanished because there are a smattering of older emails still residing in folders.
I'm nowhere near my storage limit.
Any ideas how or why this happened and any chance of recovery for these missing emails?
Comments, suggestions, explanations, tips much appreciated!
bashley
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@bashley do you by any chance hide read messages? https://help.vivaldi.com/mail/mail-get-started/view-and-manage-messages/#Display_messages_with_View_Filters
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@WildEnte Thanks for your suggestion. No, I haven't set up anything with filters. I've done nothing to change my daily routine with Vivaldi webmail. This routine is unchanged for years. The sudden email disappearances appear random, some folders completely cleaned out, some showing a small fraction of 2 or 3 year old emails.
Emails received today and moved to folders are fine, just like normal.
Are there ever any rare or random glitches with retrievals from Vivaldi's server?
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@bashley Vivaldi doesn't have a mail server. If you use the Vivaldi built-in mail clients, then mail comes from your provider's server or, if you are using Vivaldi Webmail, it comes from a RoundCube server (the provider that serves Vivaldi-branded webmail).
You appear to be talking about Vivaldi webmail. Is that the case? If so, we need to move this topic to the webmail category.
But then, you talk of "retrievals," as though you are using a client. With webmail, nothing is retrieved. It is always on the server.
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Thanks for weighing in @Ayespy. Sorry, I should have specified that, yes, I'm using the webmail version.
This sudden disappearance of most of emails stored in folders feels like "event", with a sharp beginning (this morning) and a sharp ending (this evening). I say this because right now all systems are GO, i.e. new emails today are received, read and moved to various folders, all retrievable.
Further, the small number emails unaffected are utterly random and scattered, a few old ones, a few folders 3/4 gone a few recent ones. Fragmented remains.
Just feels overall weird!
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@bashley that is weird. And your report, so far, is unique.
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AAyespy moved this topic from Mail on -
@Ayespy The only other 'x' factor, which I'd wager is highly unlikely to be related is Vivaldi's recent invitation to participate in Vivaldi's mastadon social.
Would you happen to know if there's some way to route my experience to a working member on the Vivaldi team? I could submit my account number etc. see if my data can be checked?
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@bashley No, participation on Vivaldi's Mastodon server instance would not be connected in any way.
As Far as I know, Vivaldi staff have no access to any of the behind the scenes data concerning your webmail. They can format the UI and certain server options within the limits allowed by RoundCube, but cannot access individual accounts. Like anyone, if you gave them your log-on credentials for your account, they could log on as though they were you and rummage around and see if they could see anything obvious, which would also mean they had total access to all of your emails.
The way to connect with a community staffer (they are the ones that manage webmail) you would Send a message to Vivaldi.
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Okay, thanks @Ayespy for the follow-up. Kinda looks like I might be up the creek without a paddle.
Fortunately, ( I hope, I think) damage isn't catastrophic since this isn't my primary email and I transact no business with it.
Would this incident suggest I might be better off overall downloading the desktop client?
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@bashley The two have nothing whatever to do with each other.
Data loss is not a known issue with the desktop client. If you are using Vivaldi, you already have the desktop client. You just have to turn it on (Settings/Productivity Features).
I have been using the desktop client for up to six different accounts for over five years - no data loss. It is my daily driver, when it comes to email.
That said, I can't account for what happened to your RoundCube email, and could not guarantee that using a mail client instead of webmail would make your RoundCube account behave differently. What IS known is that once you have fetched an email into the client in Vivaldi, it will not go away unless you knowingly and intentionally send it away.
Volunteer Mod and tester on Windows 11 Home X64, i7-13700 @ 5.4 GHz turbo; Intel UHD 770 graphics; 1TB NV2 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD; 32 GB DDR4-3200 RAM. Community Code of Conduct
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@Ayespy said in Sudden disappearance of saved emails?:
once you have fetched an email into the client in Vivaldi, it will not go away unless you knowingly and intentionally send it away
Well if it's IMAP and the emails are deleted from trash, they are deleted everywhere. Downloading messages to an email client helps but it's not a backup.
Usually on Win11 running Vivaldi Snapshot builds. Opinionated about working efficiently with email. Folders are evil | Mail workflow: receive, read, reply, mark as read, done.
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@WildEnte My IMAP mails are not deleted until they're deleted from trash. By me. I have literally tens of thousands of trash emails hanging around in at least one of my instances, long after the IMAP server consigned them to oblivion. The other way, however, I delete trash, it gets deleted at the IMAP server as well.
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Are you using any other email clients to access the account?
FWIW Vivaldi's webmail client's default configuration is to retain messages moved to Trash folder until user selects them for removal.
