FastMail.FM maintains detailed logs of all messages received, moved and deleted for 1 week. Using these logs, we've consistently been able to confirm that we've never "lost" user emails. Any user reported cases of lost emails have been due to one or more of the following circumstances:
- Some old previously configured computer which is configured to POP download emails from a FastMail.FM account
- Some external service (eg myrealbox.com, gmail.com, etc) which was previously configured to POP download emails from FastMail.FM
- Someone else logging into the person's account (check the Login Log screen, available from the Options screen, which shows all logins to your account in the last 2 weeks)
- Someone having modified the Access Control List of a mailbox to share the mailbox with someone else
- Not realising that the "Select ALL" option selects ALL emails, not just those on the currently displayed screen, and then doing a delete
- Not realising that an email was selected/checked when doing a delete
- Having some filters or rules in place to reject/discard the messages (we've seen people with filters both at FastMail.FM, and filters on their local email software, so check both)
If you accidentally deleted an email, then it should have been moved into the Trash folder. You can retrieve the email by switching to that folder, and moving the email to your Inbox.
Please confirm none of these are the possible cause of the problem.
If none of these steps resolves your problem, or you have accidently deleted some message permanently, you will need to request a restore from backup. To do so, please follow the next section.
You can restore all folders except "Junk Mail". We keep backups for a week, so make sure you send in your restoration request as quickly as possible.
- Click Options, then Restore from Backup.
- Read the the notes, and click the button to begin the restore when you're ready. Depending on the size of your account, the restore might take a few minutes or many hours, we will email you when it is complete.
- Be sure to carefully read the email that is sent to you. The restored emails are placed into temporary folders that are deleted after a week. Any email you want to keep you must copy from the temporary folder(s) to a standard folder.
Note: During a restore, any message flags that you had applied to the messages will be lost. This means that the restored messages will lose their "Seen" status and appear as unread mails in the folder.