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Regarding 10 years of email...do you also keep your last 10 years worth of normal mail lying around? Do you have boxes full of it?

Inbox zero is the way forward; once you've read and processed an email, if there is a pressing reason to keep it, then archive, otherwise trash it.
 
I have e-mails dating back to 1998. The reason? There have been numorous times when I had to go back and look for a lost password or attachment.

Also, my Mother passed away back in 2004 and I find it enjoyable to read the e-mail exchanges we had.

Don't come down too hard on people who keep e-mails. Everyone has their own reasons.
 
I can bet you it was not the beta. The mail would have to be on the iphone for it to be deleted in your account. There is no way you had all 10 years worth of messages on your phone.
 
Just to set the record straight...

I recently installed OS 3.0 beta 3 onto my iphone. I then proceeded to setup my mail account as usual. Of course the phone does not hold ten years worth of email (which is only about 2 gigs anyway), but it does sync up the 200 most recent emails. I believe the iPhone client uses IMAP with Yahoo, and something got screwed up.

Its most definitely the phone. Trust me I am not that dozy to have deleted 10 years worth because I f*cked up some setting on my phone/ my mail client.

This problem has happened to a couple of other individuals... - Its the phone.

Having spoken to Yahoo customer services, they can't do jack, dont have any logs to help work out the issue, or any backups.

Sonicjay - Thanks for the info, will try it out :)

I am not asking for sympathy, just a friendly warning... if you are like me,.. and like to mess with new beta software, just be careful with 3.0 beta3. This is probably the biggest possible mess the phone could have caused me.

At least I have a POP3 backup and I intend to try and reverse the damage.

As for 10 years of mail, most of its sentimental. I do go back on things sometimes, like when did I buy that piece of hardware and what it cost etc.. Its my life database in a way...


loiphin.
 
Email Yahoo!IMMEDIATELY!

Long time reader, first time poster.

I had the very same problem. Go to Yahoo! Help, and email them, give them details about what happened and they will restore your inbox on the server to an earlier date!
ACT FAST, because they can't restore your inbox to a date > 48 hours.
Hope this helps!
rk

Just to set the record straight...

I recently installed OS 3.0 beta 3 onto my iphone. I then proceeded to setup my mail account as usual. Of course the phone does not hold ten years worth of email (which is only about 2 gigs anyway), but it does sync up the 200 most recent emails. I believe the iPhone client uses IMAP with Yahoo, and something got screwed up.

Its most definitely the phone. Trust me I am not that dozy to have deleted 10 years worth because I f*cked up some setting on my phone/ my mail client.

This problem has happened to a couple of other individuals... - Its the phone.

Having spoken to Yahoo customer services, they can't do jack, dont have any logs to help work out the issue, or any backups.

Sonicjay - Thanks for the info, will try it out :)

I am not asking for sympathy, just a friendly warning... if you are like me,.. and like to mess with new beta software, just be careful with 3.0 beta3. This is probably the biggest possible mess the phone could have caused me.

At least I have a POP3 backup and I intend to try and reverse the damage.

As for 10 years of mail, most of its sentimental. I do go back on things sometimes, like when did I buy that piece of hardware and what it cost etc.. Its my life database in a way...


loiphin.
 
that's what you get for using Yahoo email :p

kidding....kidding


In all seriousness, I feel for ya. Hopefully you can get everything restored back to how it was.
 
I know, yeah? They're so small, what possible benefit could I get from erasing them?

I can think of one or two times I've needed to go back and look something up from 4 or 5 years ago, but I can't think of a single time that having that 4 extra GB of space would have made a difference.

Just checked, mine go back to November, 2001.

Not only that, but in some cases I don't even bother to read my email. Well, only for my Hotmail - because when I used to use it, it got so cluttered with junk mail that I just left it for dead. I think right now I have nearly 7000 unread messages. :eek:

More generally, keeping correspondence is quite normal. In fact, it's been done for the whole course of recorded history. A lot of the bottom-up historical methodology actually relies on correspondence. One, of course, has to wonder what is going to happen in the future, because the only correspondence we leave behind are digitized (for better or worse), because while they can be kept indefinitely without degradation, eventually they're lost for good (like in the OPs case).
 
Regarding 10 years of email...do you also keep your last 10 years worth of normal mail lying around? Do you have boxes full of it?

Here's a real world example. I bought the last version of Parallels for my Mac and had Windows on my Mac for awhile.

I stopped using it and removed it.

Now, I've been thinking of recently upgrading to the newer one. If I have my old code, I can save $30. Well, look at that...spotlight found the old e-mail that has that information in it.

Is that example not far enough back for you? Well, here's another. I bought a DVD duplicator about 5 or 6 years ago. Every 2 or 3 years they come out with a software update. I can only download it for free with the registration info from when I bought it, otherwise they charge a large amount of money for it. Well, old e-mail to the rescue again!

I could go on, but here's 2 real world examples where my old e-mail has saved me actual cash.

I can't figure out why people think this is strange.
 
I personally don't think it's strange ... I just don't know how you kept all those emails in hotmail's 2 meg limit :eek:

(back when that was the case, pre-gmail)

Well, I've always kept everything on my Mac. My inbox is always quite small.

I agree that the OP shouldn't be keeping all that mail online. But most of the comments that followed were surprised that the old e-mails existed at all. That's the part I don't get. Hard drives are very big now! Why not?
 
Here's a real world example. I bought the last version of Parallels for my Mac and had Windows on my Mac for awhile.

I stopped using it and removed it.

Now, I've been thinking of recently upgrading to the newer one. If I have my old code, I can save $30. Well, look at that...spotlight found the old e-mail that has that information in it.

Is that example not far enough back for you? Well, here's another. I bought a DVD duplicator about 5 or 6 years ago. Every 2 or 3 years they come out with a software update. I can only download it for free with the registration info from when I bought it, otherwise they charge a large amount of money for it. Well, old e-mail to the rescue again!

I could go on, but here's 2 real world examples where my old e-mail has saved me actual cash.

I can't figure out why people think this is strange.

There is no need to give examples; if you re-read my post you'll see I said "if there is a reason to keep it, archive it". I don't delete all my mail, I keep mail that I think might be useful (including things like software purchase receipts/activation emails etc.). But probably 90% of my email if not more can be trashed once dealt with.
 
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