Windows Live Mail - Accidentally Deleted An Account

Vern1961 · 31 Jul 2012 at 14:02

This morning WLM (on Win 7)was having trouble accessing one of my mail servers (the wife's actually). The previous trick on Outlook Express in Vista et al was simply to delete the log in and restore the relevant .iaf file.

Unfortunately, WLM not only deletes the log in, it also deletes the whole mail sub folder and with it the actual emails, for that account. As a result I'm now officially in the doghouse.

A quick Google search indicates there ought to be a way of restoring the original account by ferreting around in the AppData folder. However, despite making my "User" folder read/write and to show Hidden folders, I can't get the AppData and sub-folders to appear.

Is there any way out of this situation or am I borked?

Deception · 31 Jul 2012 at 14:08

Vern1961 said:
This morning WLM (on Win 7)was having trouble accessing one of my mail servers (the wife's actually). The previous trick on Outlook Express in Vista et al was simply to delete the log in and restore the relevant .iaf file.

Unfortunately, WLM not only deletes the log in, it also deletes the whole mail sub folder and with it the actual emails, for that account. As a result I'm now officially in the doghouse.

A quick Google search indicates there ought to be a way of restoring the original account by ferreting around in the AppData folder. However, despite making my "User" folder read/write and to show Hidden folders, I can't get the AppData and sub-folders to appear.

Is there any way out of this situation or am I borked?

WinKey + R and type %appdata%

See if the stuff you need is in there.

edscdk · 31 Jul 2012 at 14:10

its a system folder you can also jsut type its name in the address bar and go straight to it...

Vern1961 · 31 Jul 2012 at 14:49

Thanks, that found the folder(s) but the last restore point was over a week ago. As it seems you can only restore from the master LiveMail folder, that would (presumably) wipe out any emails received since then for all users.

I just wish MS had coded in a warning that deletion removes the whole account and not just the login details. Lesson learned, I guess.

Deception · 31 Jul 2012 at 15:05

Were emails not store on the mail server (should have been an option when setting up the account)?

If not, then might want to do that in future.