Why is my MSN Hotmail Inbox suddenly empty?

Read the article that everyone's commenting on.
Subscribe to the RSS Feed for comments on this article.

Leo, you forgot to include that the Inbox becomes empty after one has not signed in for more than a certain period, i.e. one month etc, or did Hotmail stop doing this?

Hi Leo,

I use Yahoo email and keep a copy of all the newsletters I get in a separate folder. That way if something goes wrong, and I stop getting a newsletter, I have something to work from.

Is there any way to save these files offline so they can be restored if Yahoo somehow loses them?

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

The scenario I'm addressing above is really "one day you use it, and the next
day it's gone", but you do raise an important reminder: Hotmail (and other free
services) will discard your Inbox and possibly everything else if you fail to
login for a period of time. Typically it's a month, sometimes three, and I
believe GMail is 6 months.

Leo

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFHcAT/CMEe9B/8oqERAj/CAJ9Wl/zrOx5FDLv/VI0WCgOfxXmBYgCfSYS6
bZBSkjhpRHnuzwYLWI1r6go=
=V6tu
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Remeber that sometimes if someone is using OUTLOOK type web mail clients, they can be configured to downdload from your hotmail server or ISP server and then appear to have been "deleted".

Hello Leo,
I am having some issues with either msn messenger or hotmail. On msn messenger it keeps telling me that i have received an email from such and such. When i go to my inbox to view the email, its not there. On msn messenger it says i have 28 new emails, i go to hotmail to check them out it says i have no new email. At this point im worried that its some sort of virus and im not even clicking on the pop up that says you have received an email from John ..... what do you think it is?

Regarding the last comment posted by sako on Jan 23, 2008... I am having that exact problem. My msn messenger will pop up saying I just recieved an email (they even specify the person's name), but when I go to my inbox the emails are not there.......big mystery. Do you have any idea what this is?

I know this is not exactly on topic but I have googled and this is as close as I have found to my problem!

I am having the exact same issue as the last two posters. All day today, messenger has told me new mail has arrived (up to 7 so far) but no emails are showing up. I have sent two test emails to myself from another account, those do show up.

There are zero emails in my junk folder. What is going on??

I am also having the exact same problem as the previous 3 posters. Given that these are all recent, I'm wondering if MS is really having server issues.

I too am having this same problem. It started about 2 weeks ago and my inbox is completely empty, yet MSN shows (7) new emails.
This is just not acceptable. I may me missing very important emails.

MSN Hotmail has lost all my contacts three times. Today was the last. I am done with them. G mail is much better but what can I do about the 200 e mail addresses I had in my CONTACT list. They are gone. Even the ones in a folder.

To post a comment on "Why is my MSN Hotmail Inbox suddenly empty?", please return to that article's main page.