can't find old emails

[watsimijig]

Hi,

I'm looking to acmes some old emails which were sent/received  in 2015.Unfortunately I can only get information that dates back to 2018.are there any settings I can adjust.

Thankyou

[Gondola]

I think you've probably looked at the mailbox as carefully as possible. You've found some 2017 dated messages so that does imply that messages created on or synchronised to the mail platform active up to 2018 were migrated over to the first Open Xchange platform. Nothing prior to 2017 might indicate that the Apple Mac was using a POP3 email account setup and was deleting from the online mailbox Inbox all downloaded messages that hopefully you'll find on the Apple Mac.

I'd suggest using the Apple Mac in an offline mode to view whatever content it has captured. Were you using an Apple Time Machine for backups in the 2015 - 2017 period?

In relation to the TalkTalk Mail Archive function, you'll see the Archive virtual folder and year by year sub-folders but only after the first time use of the function. So, if you've never used Archive before on this newest mail platform then there will not be an Archive folder at the bottom of the standard folders. Previous use of Archive on the former mail platform will have migrated that Archive folder to sit under your My Folders category. But if you don't see any 2015 sub-folder then messages for that year will not have been archived by TalkTalk Mail.

I think your best option is to try and see what's in the Apple Mac Mail Inbox and or Time Machine backup.

[watsimijig]

Hi thank you for you're prompt response its really appreciated.

I followed your guidelines and managed to change the messages date priorty ,my oldest sent message showed May 2017 and the earliest received/inbox November 2018. I then pressed the folder chevron which opened up my named folders, however there was nothing to show the historical years/folders,even the 2018 to date period.

Unfortunately I don't recall seeing anything about the open Xchange,all of my emails during the missing period would of been sent through the Apple Mac that I'm currently trying to access them from.

Sorry to be a pain ,is there anything else that you could recommend or any other setting I could try

Regards

Mark

[Gondola]

Towards the end of 2018 TalkTalk upgraded TalkTalk Mail to a new service provider, Open Xchange. All mailbox mail messages and folders (but not Address Book or Calendar) were at that time migrated to the new mail platform. Between mid 2023 and the end of 2023 the mail platform was migrated to a new Cloud platform also with Open Xchange and as before All mail messages and folders were retained.

The fact that you do not see any messages older than 2018 suggests that they were not present online to be migrated to the first Open Xchange mail platform.

Perhaps you were using POP3 email account software in the period 2015-2018 and downloaded and deleted messages from the server. In which case the device that you were using then may still hold those messages locally?

In TalkTalk Mail webmail to view the oldest messages in any given folder you'd use the More message options triple dots icon (ellipsis) above the Folder List view and select the Sort by Date and Sort order Ascending.  To view Archived messages select in the Folder view the Archive virtual folder and its right facing chevron to expand to show year by year Archive folders. If there was a 2015 folder then that's where it would be.

In general, even though there is the Archive feature, it is recommended that users should make their own backups of important mail messages.  TalkTalk do not offer a backup service which means we cannot call upon TalkTalk to find 'missing' mail messages.