I received an email from someone and was in the process of responding to it but it seems to have disappeared, hopefully just temporarily.
I clicked on "reply" and would write some, then clicked on the "minimize" box and it would be at the bottom of the screen ready to work on later. I did this several times; but over the weekend, with guests in the house and my wife downloading some photos off the camera my email (in the state of reply) seems to be gone. It is neither in items sent or deleted, nor is it in drafts. Do you know a way I can retrieve this email?
I'm afraid the news is not good. You've looked in all the places that it could have been (drafts, in particular). I would have expected to find them in drafts, but I'm not sure why they're not there, though I can make a few guesses.
The real "problem" here is that you've picked perhaps one of the most dangerous ways to manage your email under construction that I can imagine.
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I have a strong aversion to just minimizing windows to "save" a work in progress. The fact is, when you minimize a window, the application may not save anything at all! The application, be it your mail client, your word processor, or anything else, may elect to simply leave the information in the computer's memory without writing it to disk in any way.
Now, in the normal case, these programs should be on the look out for things that might cause you to lose your data. For example, let's say someone comes along and asks Windows to shut down. The programs should notice that you have open windows with unsaved data, and ask you about each one. If it's someone else shutting down your computer, and they get tired of answering all these questions, they might just start hitting ESC to make the messages go away ... and discard all your data.
The abnormal case is worse. If someone hits the power button, or the computer unexpectedly reboots for any reason, *poof* - all your hard work could be gone.
Most programs "auto save" periodically. Mail programs will auto save to the drafts folder, word processing and other programs will often auto save to temporary files that can be recovered in case of a failure. But in all cases, if the program asks "do you want to save", and the answer is the escape key, or "No" - then the auto saved copy is removed as well.
So it's unclear exactly what happened in your case.
"Save early, save often" is something that most computer users learn by having lost hours of work at one point or another. I know I have! In short, don't rely on a minimized window to save anything for you. Save it yourself. If you're updating a document in Word, for example, hit CTRL+S every so often to write your work back out to disk. In email, the same keystroke typically works to save a copy of your email to drafts. If you need to step away from the computer, don't just minimize, close the window, making sure to say "Yes" when it asks if you want to save your work in progress. That way you don't have to worry about someone else answering "No" while you're not around, and when you return, you'll find it in the drafts folder.
Note: this does not apply to web-based email services like Hotmail, Gmail and the like. If you close your browser it will discard any mail being composed without asking. You must explicitly hit any "Save Draft" or equivalent button in the web mail interface if you want your email to be saved for later.
Related:
Ask Leo! - Are deleted emails really deleted?
Ask Leo! - Are free email services worth it?
Article C2630 - April 21, 2006
MSN messenger seems to have disapeared from my computer. How do I access it?
Posted by: jackie at July 30, 2006 1:52 AMI accidentally did not save my microsoft word document. Can I get it back? Please respond back!
Posted by: Eileen at December 6, 2006 9:16 PMEileen
thats aweful, I spent over an hour on my email and on the last sentence msn timed out before i could send i didn't expect that cause i never left my computer or quit typing. Where is it? Can I get it back??? this is horrible i did nothing else but the email.
Posted by: kristie at May 8, 2008 12:54 PMI was composing an email and I saved it several times. I got called away from my work, and when I came back I had timed out. How can I find what I had saved?
Thankou
-Leo
BLOODY HECK! I was composing an email with Yahoo and stopped to consult an internet site's actual name and author which I wished to recommend to my recipient; the email disappeared. I've been mortally wounded like this before. THANKS for the reference above to G-mail and the preventions built-in [Mark,Ap.2006]. Loss of a 'composition' can be devastating!
Posted by: J E Pettitt at August 14, 2008 2:10 AMI was composing a reply and it disappeared.
I recomposed it and click to save it to drafts and then I couldnt find the drafts folder on MSN
Posted by: Paul at October 6, 2008 1:05 PMI, too, have suffered by having a lengthy email accidentally disappear just as I was finishing it. Now, if I know it's a long one, I compose in Word and then copy and paste it into my Hotmail email. I've never figured out which key is the culprit, but it's one at the bottom of the keyboard and if I just brush it, everything is gone. Aaaaarrgh!!!! So save, save, save......
Posted by: Barry at March 4, 2009 12:54 PMWhy didn't my letter get saved as a draft like usual. Not only did it not save but 10 other drafts just disappeared. Can I get them back and why is this happening?
03-Apr-2009
Hi can you help.We saved an email'Hotmail' to the save draft folder and retrieved it later to add more text, we then clicked on the save draft again but all the extra text dissapeared, what can we do to get it back and was it because our email was to long. we have checked in the commputer bin etc but cannot find the rest of the email anywhere. I am 75 so simple instructions would be much appreciated...Our security system is firfox and are computer is Vista...Thankyou...Scouser...
Posted by: William Roberts at May 6, 2009 5:17 AMthis happens to me ALL the time - typing a lengthy email and then, poof, its gone - no way to get it back. It started when I got this Dell Laptop and Windows Vista. Never occurred on my desktop. I must be hitting a key accidentally but I can't figure it out.
Posted by: suzanne at June 25, 2009 6:09 AM