Hotmail automatically deleted my email?

I logged in at my account yesterday (like I do daily) and saw that Hotmail has automatically deleted email. I can no longer find 5 years worth of email. Where have they all gone? I am really worried – there were some very important messages. How can I get those emails that were removed from my account? Also, can you tell me why this has happened? I trust that Hotmail, being such a popular service, will not make its users go through this ordeal.
Mina Sabry

The small print on most of these free email services clearly states that they cannot be held responsible for the loss of information (messages and/or contact list). Thus, if Hotmail has ‘automatically’ deleted email from the account, don’t put the blame squarely on them. It was your duty to take a backup of the Hotmail email. Anyway, on the bright side, the chances of recovering the missing messages are pretty high.

Before I tell you how to contact Hotmail to restore (if possible) the lost email, please go through this page thoroughly.

Emails deleted from Hotmail account – the most common cause

One of the common causes of emails being ‘automatically’ deleted from the Hotmail account is usage of an email program. I’ve learnt that this is common especially on Apple computers when users set up their Hotmail accounts in the default Mail application which not only downloads the messages to the local machine but also deletes them from the server. Thus, when the account is checked via the webmail interface, the emails appear to be deleted. They are, however, very much residing on your computer; please open Mail to check this up.

Unfortunately, once email is downloaded from the online Hotmail account to your Mac by the Mail application it cannot be uploaded back unless each message is forwarded individually. This is because the Hotmail account is set up on Mail with the POP3 (Post Office Protocol). However, you can prevent this from happening in future by choosing the option to leave a copy of the message on the server.

Didn’t use an email client (don’t even know what that means)

Though rare, there is a chance that something went wrong with the server on which your Hotmail account resides and email were automatically deleted. The possibility is very much there.

The only way to sort this out is to get in touch with the Hotmail staff via the Windows Live Solutions Center web site. Please sign up and create a profile which should take less than a couple of minutes. Then load the link below in the browser – open a new window/tab, if you want; simply copy-paste the URL in the address field. This takes you directly to the page through which you can contact someone at Hotmail for the “email automatically deleted” problem.
https://windowslivehelp.com/vi.aspx?id=2312493b-27c4-48cc-84d5-c3632e6e33e4

Describe your problem in detail and stray away from being too emotional about the loss! Keep your fingers crossed!