Solved Outlook (Office 2021): emails spontaneously disappear from inbox

IanMosley said:

What are your autoarchive properties set to?


Anything other than 'Do not archive items in this folder' will eventually lead to lost items, the frequency depends on the settings.

Click to expand...

Mine shows "Run AutoArchive every 14 days" which I have Unchecked

Dru2 said:

Whie it was (is?) possible to have an account with both POP and IMAP, this can cause issues and thus most email clients will have you choose one or the other when setting up an account. Additionally, most ISP providers will require you use one or the other per their setup instructions to insure the account functions properly per protocol.

That said, and given your issues, I'd also suggest you check with your email provider to insure you're using the correct settings per the account, as this "could" also be why you're having issues.

Click to expand...

zinc said:

I'm learning, first hand, the misery of mixing POP & IMAP. At least w/a little knowledge now I can at least cope & implement a plan of what to do and NOT to do.
Spectrum refuses to do anything but point to their web page showing IMAP settings. They no longer will discuss POP settings, and REFUSE to talk email clients at all.

Click to expand...

At the end of the day, I would use the settings Spectrum posted online. Not addressing that issue is not going to fix anything else - no matter the other suggestions posted.

Additionally, no matter how many "different" devices, OS, or email clients you use (which causes a still rather confusing post to navigate through), the email account settings need to be the same throughout - whether on Vista, Windows 11, or IOS. Office 2021 or Windows Mail. That means if the email account is joe.blow.com, those settings need to be the same per the ISP suggestions through the myriad of devices, OS, and email clients.

Good luck.

Dru2 said:

At the end of the day, I would use the settings Spectrum posted online. Not addressing that issue is not going to fix anything else - no matter the other suggestions posted.

Additionally, no matter how many "different" devices, OS, or email clients you use (which causes a still rather confusing post to navigate through), the email account settings need to be the same throughout - whether on Vista, Windows 11, or IOS. Office 2021 or Windows Mail. That means if the email account is joe.blow.com, those settings need to be the same per the ISP suggestions through the myriad of devices, OS, and email clients.

Click to expand...

Yes. Funny that my ancient device settings (Time Warner Cable), will not even be discussed by Spectrum Tech Support (Spectrum bought Time Warner Cable). Oh well.

In the end it was my own fault for not realizing a POP account will (can) remove messages from the web mail server AND device that uses IMAP.

1) pop-server properties, General: "Include this account when receiving mail or synchronizing" is CHECKED - (I still do not know what this means)
2) pop-server properties, Advanced: "Leave a copy of messages on server" is UNCHECKED. (this is where I probably screwed up. I guess I should have marked it checked some time ago, or at least while trying to run POP & IMAP devices at the same time). The POP device snagged emails off of my ISP mail server AND right out of the IMAP device inbox. My fault for not keeping up w/technology)

Thanks to all for the help.

zinc said:

The POP device snagged emails off of my ISP mail server AND right out of the IMAP device inbox. My fault for not keeping up w/technology)

Click to expand...

To be quite honest this doesn't make any sense to me, but...

That said, for clarity... if you have two different email accounts (joe.blow.com and jane.blow.com) under one mail app (Outlook), where joe.blow.com is using POP, and jane.blow.com is using IMAP, the joe.blow.com email account is NOT going download jane's emails because they are different accounts, just as jane's emails aren't going to be downloaded to joe's account.

Additionally, the way one account works, does NOT affect the way the other works because they different account with different protocols. In short one doesn't affect the other... no matter the device or email app.

Good luck. And yeah, stick to the ISP's recommended settings.