Deleted Email the Host Cannot Bring Back

The folder that is not there

A staff member tidies a mailbox and deletes a folder of client correspondence by mistake. Or someone leaves, and their mailbox is closed the same week to free up a licence.

Months later the mail is needed: a dispute over what was quoted, a question from the accountant, a client asking what was agreed two summers ago.

The host is asked to restore it. Quite often the answer is that its backups do not include email, or that they are kept for a day or two and the mail rolled out of them long ago.

Nobody had asked before, because nothing had gone wrong before.

How mail disappears

• A folder deleted on a phone, gone from the server and every other device.
• A deleted items folder that empties itself after a set time.
• A departing person's mailbox, closed to save a licence or space.
• A clean-up before a handover, by someone who meant well.
• A filter rule that deletes what it was meant to file.
• A plan change or host move that left an old mailbox behind.

The third does the most lasting damage. A closed mailbox takes every folder with it, and the person who knew what was in it has usually gone too.

What the host's backup is for

Hosts generally keep backups of their servers, but the aim is recovering from a failed disk or a damaged server, not undoing one person's mistake.

Some backups leave mail out altogether. Others include it but keep only the last few copies, so a deletion noticed next week has already been copied over.

Restores may be offered only for a whole account, which would wind back the website and every mailbox together. Some hosts charge for them, and some take days.

None of that is unreasonable. It just needs to be known before the morning someone wants a folder back.

Questions to ask the host

Ask in writing, and keep the reply with your hosting details.

Ask whether the backup includes email, how often it runs and how many copies are kept. Then ask whether one mailbox, or one folder, can be restored without touching anything else, and what that costs and how long it takes.

If your mail runs on Office 365 or Google Apps for Work rather than at the host, ask the same of whoever manages those accounts. Both keep deleted mail recoverable for a limited time only.

The first hour after a deletion

Look in the deleted items or trash folder first, in webmail as well as on the computer. Single messages often wait there for a while; whole folders are sometimes deleted outright.

Then think about devices that have been switched off. A laptop closed since before the deletion may still hold a copy: start it with the network disconnected and export the folder before it catches up.

And call the host the same day. Short-lived backups are replaced on a schedule, and each day of waiting can cost the copy that still holds the mail.

A worked example

A cooperative preschool runs morning and afternoon classes in a church hall, with a teacher, an assistant and parents who take turns helping in the classroom and serving on the board.

Board jobs change hands every June. The registrar, the treasurer and the president each have an address at the school's domain, passed to the next volunteer along with the password.

This summer the outgoing registrar tidied the mailbox before handing it on, and deleted the folders from past years, including the waitlist and every family's emails about places and fees.

In October a family questioned the date they had joined the waitlist, and the new registrar found nothing. The host restored only whole accounts, from copies kept for a few days, and those were long gone.

The board now treats the school's email as records. It moved to a plan whose mail backup keeps copies for months and restores single folders.

Each June, every role mailbox is exported to storage the school owns before the password changes hands, and nothing in a role mailbox is deleted without the board agreeing.

Closing a mailbox properly

When someone leaves, their mailbox is part of the business's records, not part of their desk. Export it to a file before anything is closed, and store the file with the other records.

On Office 365, a departing person's mailbox can be converted to a shared mailbox, which keeps the mail readable and, within size limits, needs no licence of its own. Check what your plan allows before deleting the account.

Forward the old address to whoever took over the work. Ask your accountant how long records should be kept, since some of them exist only as email.

A backup you control

Decide which mailboxes hold the business's records: usually the owner's, the accounts address, the main enquiries address and anyone who deals with clients in writing.

For those, arrange a copy that does not depend on the host's server backup. The host may sell a mail backup that keeps copies for longer.

Some Office 365 and Google Apps for Work plans include an archive that survives deletion. Or a scheduled export can go to storage the business owns.

Whichever it is, restore one old folder to a spare mailbox and check that the messages open. Until a restore has worked once, nobody knows whether the backup does.

The counter-case

A business whose records live in its accounting software, and whose email is mostly scheduling, has less at stake in its mailboxes. A one-person business may need little more than a regular export kept with its files.

And a host with good mail backups still deserves the questions, because the answers change when plans change.

For most businesses, though, client correspondence is part of the record. Find out what the host keeps, and back up the mailboxes that matter in a way you control.

This week

1. Ask the host whether its backups include email.
2. Find out how long each copy is kept.
3. Ask whether one folder can be restored alone.
4. List the mailboxes that hold business records.
5. Arrange a separate backup for those mailboxes.
6. Export a leaver's mailbox before closing it.
7. Test one restore to a spare mailbox.

Step five is the one that changes the outcome. The rest tells you where you stand; a copy you control is what brings a deleted folder back after the host's copies have rolled over.

Mail kept on a single office computer, the opposite risk, is covered in POP email downloaded to one office computer.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.