emails disappear while composing

My wife and I have both had emails disappear after hitting a wrong key during their composition and they can never be found, meaning sometimes hours of extra work re-composing those emails. I've tried retrieving the lost emails, but never succeeded, so please let me know how to save all that time by retrieving them.
Cheers,
Andy

Hi, Andy

How do you compose email? In a webmail interface or using an offline client (like Thunderbird)?

What service do you use? Gmail? Yahoo?

Do you happen to remember what specific key you and your wife hit? Is it the same one each time that causes the disappearing email?

Does the entire draft disappear so that you are taken back to the inbox or draft folder after losing the message? Or is it just the whole body of the email that is gone, but you are still left in the 'compose' window?

Many/most services or clients are such that when you delete a draft it goes into cyber oblivion, never to return. With some, though, it only goes into the trash and can be recovered, though this latter situation appears to be the less likely.

With some more information someone here may be able to help you.

Thanks Foggy and the answers are in bold below:

How do you compose email? In a webmail interface or using an offline client (like Thunderbird)? We use Incredimail 2. This is free, but they offer a paid upgrade including a back-up but maybe not for an unsent email !

What service do you use? Gmail? Yahoo? Optusnet.

Do you happen to remember what specific key you and your wife hit? Is it the same one each time that causes the disappearing email?
We don't remember.

Does the entire draft disappear so that you are taken back to the inbox or draft folder after losing the message? Or is it just the whole body of the email that is gone, but you are still left in the 'compose' window?
Yes we both agree that the entire text goes and we're left with a blank compose window.

Many/most services or clients are such that when you delete a draft it goes into cyber oblivion, never to return. With some, though, it only goes into the trash and can be recovered, though this latter situation appears to be the less likely. I've even tried going into the hard drive, but even though the messages must be somewhere, I can't find them.
I hope this helps you help us,
Cheers,
Andy.

Hi, Andy

Thanks for the further information.

1. I don't know much about Incredimail. You can check the Incredimail part of this site to see if the issue has been raised before. (I checked only briefly and didn't find anything.) Incidentally, do you have the email account set up as a POP account (all email dowloaded to your IM client and removed from the server) or an IMAP account (where the IM client 'mirrors' what's on your provider's servers)?

2. I'm afraid I know nothing about Optusnet. Perhaps Ray (popowich) does and will respond here. Does Optusnet have a webmail interface that you can check to see if anything was put into its trash folder? (This would only be relevant - maybe - if your account is a POP account.)

3. If it's only the text of the email that disappears and nothing else changes (i.e. the recipient's address and email subject are still showing in those field in your compose screen), then you might try the "Ctrl + Z" trick (assuming you have a Windows machine). If/When this disppearing act happens again, STOP TYPING. Then while holding down the Ctrl button press the 'z' key. This is an "undo" function and might restore whatever was inadvertently deleted.

But whether that works or not for future instances of this, I can't say I know where IM might be hiding any already deleted compositions. Here's an article about deleted folders, but I don't know if that would help in your case. :-(

4. You say you don't remember what keys you pressed.... For some email clients pressing the 'delete' button while holding down the 'shift' key is a way of permanently deleting an email (or draft). Could you and/or your wife have accidentally hit that combination of keys?

5. I don't know how Incredimail's own support forums rate as far as helpfulness, but you could always open a topic there, too, and see if you get any good input.

I don't know if any of this helps, but stay tuned for Ray's (popowich) reply. He'll have a better idea of how to go about searching for IM's 'lost' messages -- despite the fact that he doesn't like Incredimail very much.

My only comment about IncrediMail is to uninstall it and use a different mail program such as Windows Live Mail or Mozilla Thunderbird.

IncrediMail users - Please respond - Why do you like IncrediMail? (Conduit Search Protect)

All these complicated solutions: Incredimail, Optusnet whatever.
I do the composition, editing etc. in a simple word processor, like "WordPad" then Copy and Paste. So if I lose it, I can repeat Copy-Paste anytime.

Thanks very much Foggy and again I've replied in bold below:

1. I don't know much about Incredimail. You can check the Incredimail part of this site to see if the issue has been raised before. (I checked only briefly and didn't find anything.) Incidentally, do you have the email account set up as a POP account (all email dowloaded to your IM client and removed from the server) or an IMAP account (where the IM client 'mirrors' what's on your provider's servers)? I have a POP account.

2. I'm afraid I know nothing about Optusnet. Perhaps Ray (popowich) does and will respond here. Does Optusnet have a webmail interface that you can check to see if anything was put into its trash folder? (This would only be relevant - maybe - if your account is a POP account.) I do have Optusnet webmail and checked the trash folder, but again no luck.

3. If it's only the text of the email that disappears and nothing else changes (i.e. the recipient's address and email subject are still showing in those field in your compose screen), then you might try the "Ctrl + Z" trick (assuming you have a Windows machine). If/When this disppearing act happens again, STOP TYPING. Then while holding down the Ctrl button press the 'z' key. This is an "undo" function and might restore whatever was inadvertently deleted. I think this might be the best solution and I've stuck it next to both monitors !

But whether that works or not for future instances of this, I can't say I know where IM might be hiding any already deleted compositions. Here's an article about deleted folders, but I don't know if that would help in your case. :-( I've saved that article as it may help.

4. You say you don't remember what keys you pressed.... For some email clients pressing the 'delete' button while holding down the 'shift' key is a way of permanently deleting an email (or draft). Could you and/or your wife have accidentally hit that combination of keys? I don't think so as the keys are too far from each other.

5. I don't know how Incredimail's own support forums rate as far as helpfulness, but you could always open a topic there, too, and see if you get any good input. They seem to be un-helpful, using mostly a bot instead of people.

I don't know if any of this helps, but stay tuned for Ray's (popowich) reply. He'll have a better idea of how to go about searching for IM's 'lost' messages -- despite the fact that he doesn't like Incredimail very much.

charlesh said:

All these complicated solutions: Incredimail, Optusnet whatever.
I do the composition, editing etc. in a simple word processor, like "WordPad" then Copy and Paste. So if I lose it, I can repeat Copy-Paste anytime.

Click to expand...

I do something like this myself more than half the time, though I use a regular text editor (Metapad) instead of Wordpad. I found that any rich text formatting I do in Wordpad is instantly lost whenever I paste it in the webmail (or offline) client.

But some things affect my decision. If I'm composing a relatively short message, I'll just go right to the webmail client. If I'm composing a longer message, including one I know I'll be creating over a longer period of time (like a week or so), I'll go with my text editor. But since Metapad doesn't have an autosave feature like most email clients, I'll have to save the message manually frequently AND as a further precaution, at the end of each composing session I copy-and-paste it in my webmail's own "notepad" (or an email draft), so at least I'll have an online copy of it as well, in the event my computer crashes and I lose the data. (That latter is not so unlikely; I'm presently awaiting a replacement hard drive because the one I have is causing many crashes and could go entirely soon!) So even using this alternate means of composing an email can still theoretically be accompanied by glitches and surprises that approximate beaumat's problems of lost email text.

I use a laptop machine but have not enjoyed typing on the keyboard, so I attached my former desktop keyboard to use instead. In gmail, when composing an email, especially a long one, I started to lose emails. I did an online search and read the Control Z fix. After that, the next time it occurred I stopped typing and tried that, but nothing happened. The message was nowhere to be found.

To make a long and frustrating story short, I believe the reason was that I inadvertently depressed the key positioned between alt and control on the right side. It looks like a piece of paper with an arrow. (I don't see the same key on my laptop keyboard.) I don't know what the key is for. I removed that key--just popped it off and since then it has not happened again.

That's one way to fix the problem! The key you referred do simulates a right mouse click from the keyboard:

Hi Popowich,

Thank you for this information. What a handy key I don't dare use. Twice I lost important replies composing in gmail. Not my favorite email program. Would much prefer to use it within MSOutlook but I don't have the program on this computer.

I don't see that key on the laptop; it doesn't appear in the last row of keys. One mysterious key is labeled fn. I really should do my homework and learn to identify all the function keys.

I found this site during a search. I'm sure I will return.

Much obliged.

I had to hunt down one of my older keyboards to find one with that right click arrow key. My current keyboard doesn't have it either.

The function key might be color coded, and it's typically associated with alternate functions located on the F row (F1, F2, F3, etc) and in some other spots on your keyboard.