All Sent Item Emails gone prior to September 2022

Hi - I was looking for an email that I sent in August and just noticed that all of the emails in my sent items are gone prior to 9/3. This has never happened before and I have my outlook configured to keep messages on the server. Is anyone else experiencing this with their emails ?

Responses

Accepted Solution

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HMA1804

Visitor

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7 Messages

3 years ago

What you have explained my iPhone did and purged sent item emails would be the first time I have heard such a thing in many years that I have been an Xfinity/Comcast customer and using my iPhone. There are no archive settings turned on for my Outlook client or on my phone. If you were able to see deleted messages from my sent items can you share how many messages were deleted? The number should be in the thousands not the dozens of emails I deleted in September.

Because of this situation, I had to go back to an old laptop that I upgraded from two months ago to retrieve my sent emails from an Outlook client. This Outlook client was also configured to use Xfinity mail directly. I put it in airplane mode to prevent it from connecting to the Xfinity server and I was able to export my sent items.

Word to the wise Xfinity community, back up your emails - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/back-up-your-email-e5845b0b-1aeb-424f-924c-aa1c33b18833. Here are the steps to restore your email from one computer to another (for Outlook users) - https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000138994/how-to-move-your-email-account-and-pst-file-from-one-computer-to-another-using-microsoft-outlook.

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XfinityGabrielS

Official Employee

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135 Messages

@HMA1804 3,140 messages were deleted from the sent folder on that date. I looked in the last 30 days that was the only time I see this type of delete. If you cannot recall anything happening on that date/time or your device isn't set to auto-delete every 30 days then I would change your password to be on the safe side and update all of your devices with the new password.

From our perspective, we see the commands received and the client that sent the commands and have no way to determine the circumstances around the requests. I can tell you it all happened within the same session around the same time, so most likely it was a select all or automatic action. I do see the trash folder was cleaned out roughly 30 minutes before that using the same device, but that was only 36 messages.

Good idea on the offline Outlook restore!

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Official Employees are from multiple teams within Xfinity: CARE, Product, Leadership.
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3 years ago

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XfinityJosephA

Official Employee

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1.7K Messages

3 years ago

Hello, @HMA1804, I know it's always stressful to see missing emails. We will do all we can to help. Are you able to let us know if sent emails are missing in Outlook and from your sent folder when signing into your Comcast email account?

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HMA1804

Visitor

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7 Messages

3 years ago

Yes. The emails are also missing when I log into xfinity via a browser. This has not happened in the many years that I have been using xfinity.

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XfinityJosephA

Official Employee

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1.7K Messages

I appreciate your reply. Anytime there's a mail client being used its tough because our support with that software is going to be very limited. When emails are gone in your mail client and in your Comcast inbox there's typically something in the mail client causing the trouble and this can happen for multiple reasons. Have you tried reviewing all your sent items folder settings to make sure it's not deleting the emails? Are those deleted emails in Trash or another folder? I know these are all simple things, but it's worth double-checking everything.

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3 years ago

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H

HMA1804

Visitor

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7 Messages

3 years ago

I have been using Outlook for over 20 years, so I am pretty familiar with the settings to leave emails on the ISP server. The sent item emails are missing from the Comcast server which means they were wiped from the source.

Does Comcast back up their email servers? Can you have the system administrators look at a back up from a month ago or so and restore the emails. The emails were there in August. Thx.

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CCMichelle

Problem Solver

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788 Messages

Thanks for reaching back out after confirming those details. We are not able to restore emails once they are deleted from the server. Have you attempted to restore the deleted email options after logging into our website?

Go to https://comca.st/3qX9SxA and log in with your email address and password.
Go to the mailbox by clicking on the Email tab.
Right-click on the Trash folder or click on the More Actions icon (three lines) next to the trash folder, then select Recover Deleted Items.

I no longer work for Comcast.

3 years ago

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HMA1804

Visitor

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7 Messages

I didn't delete anything. The emails were simply gone which is why I reported the issue. I am asking Xfinity to speak to their system administrators for your email server and restore emails from a email server backup made in August. All of my sent item emails prior to 9/3 are missing and I didn't delete them. Please escalate this issue.

3 years ago

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XfinityGabrielS

Official Employee

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135 Messages

@HMA1804

On 9/9/22 at approximately 4:08 pm eastern time, it looks like an IOS device logged in and deleted a very large number of sent messages.

Here is the OS version on the device that will hopefully help track down the device. version=19G82, os=iOS, os-version=15.6.1

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3 years ago

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H

HMA1804

Visitor

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7 Messages

If you look at the oldest deleted email in the trash folder it is from 9/9 and there isn’t a single email dated from before 9/3. All of those emails are emails that were deleted from my inbox not my sent items folder.

I doubled checked my outlook as well and the dates of the emails in the trash folder don’t farther back than 9/9. My sent item emails that are missing are from 9/3 and earlier.

3 years ago

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XfinityGabrielS

Official Employee

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135 Messages

3 years ago

Email backups are kept for 30 days and are self-service restoration.

https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/recover-deleted-email

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HMA1804

Visitor

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7 Messages

3 years ago

This doesn’t address what happened to my sent item emails prior to 9/3. Reposting the same answer as before doesn’t make this the solution. I literally had years of sent item emails saved and they went missing a few weeks ago. If I deleted them they would be in the trash - which they are not. The only emails in my trash are the inbox emails after 9/3 when I realized my sent emails were missing from the Xfinity server, and started this thread.

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XfinityGabrielS

Official Employee

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135 Messages

3 years ago

@HMA1804 - The backup comment I provided was an answer to your question. "I am asking Xfinity to speak to their system administrators for your email server and restore emails from a email server backup made in August."

The comment on the deletions from 9/9 was around the sent folder and not the inbox. I specifically looked for deletes from your sent folder. The IOS client expunged the messages and did not insert them into the trash folder first. Per RFC standards (industry-defined email standards) the email server does not dictate where deleted messages go, the client does. Clients typically move to trash and leave messages there for the server to clean up or come back and clean them up later. In this case, the client did not do that. This is often due to a setting to archive the message or put it in a trash folder on the local client.

I would check on your IOS device to see if they are in the local trash. If that is the case they can be moved back to the sent folder on the server.

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user_603687

Visitor

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3 Messages

2 years ago

@ HMA1804 I've had the exact same situation. Something is wrong here, I noticed yesterday thousands of emails from my sent folder after 9/30/22 are gone and I did not delete them. I have been using comcast.net or xfinity.com for years and have never had an issue. I am not using email client. I have spent hours on the phone, talked to 12+ customer service agents, been on hold for hours, passed around. Trying to restore my trash folder is not the answer. I'm seeing other posts from people with the same issues around the same time. Xfinity has to have DR and Back-up systems, it might event be a legal requirement. How do we get in contact with the back office folks who manage the email servers? What happened? This had to be an issue on Xfinity's side especially if there is no email client, and I did not delete thousands of emails. I have seen a forum post where the Xfinity agent had Log File data... Can anyone help?? Please!!

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Email

HMA1804

All Sent Item Emails gone prior to September 2022

HMA1804

XfinityGabrielS

XfinityJosephA

HMA1804

XfinityJosephA

HMA1804

CCMichelle

HMA1804

XfinityGabrielS

HMA1804

XfinityGabrielS

HMA1804

XfinityGabrielS

user_603687

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