Question: Cox Cable transition of emails to Yahoo email caused my unsent emails in my Outbox on Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max to disappear. Is there any way to retrieve those unsent emails from Cox or to find them on Yahoo’s email system?
I had unsent emails in my iPhone Outbox when Cox shut off my email due to the transition to Yahoo. I could not send these emails before Cox turned off my emails (and before setting up Yahoo email).
When we attempted to do the prescribed procedure for setting up account on Yahoo and transferring Cox emails to Yahoo, I could not find an “Outbox” on Yahoo and there was no evidence that those emails were sent (I always blind copy myself on sending emails, so I can see them on. my laptop).
My husband and I appreciate any help you can provide on this issue.
– Jan D.
Shalimar, Florida
Answer: My goodness, but this email transition has caused a lot of headaches for people! That includes me, and I don’t even have Cox email. I’ve just been fielding question after question about the transition and have done my best to understand it and provide assistance. I missed the mark at first, not realizing that Cox had people keeping their Cox address and was merely rehosting their accounts to servers over at Yahoo. I think the last column in which I wrote about this (Geek Note: I.G.T.M. #889, Aug 4, 2024) I did a better job.
I’m afraid I can’t even make an educated guess about emails that were lingering in your Outbox when you attempted the transition. It seems like a bad idea to begin such a radical change when your email is in a state that’s not completely stable. In that context, I would define “stable” as with no pending inbound or outbound messages. At best, I would call the ultimate disposition of those messages something like “undefined.” In other words, it’s not possible to know what happened to them.
If the messages were successfully sent, you would see them in your “Sent” folder. Since you do not, I think it’s a fair assumption that they didn’t get sent, and are lost. This is, of course, a guess, so I guess I can make one after all, but I have little confidence that it will be correct. The bottom line is that I know of no way to get them back if they’re truly gone. If you know the addressee, or the subject, or any key words that might be unique to those particular emails, the best you can hope is to let your email software do a search for you. Depending on how large your email cache is, that might take a while, but it will certainly be faster than searching manually.
I’d like to make a comment on your statement that you always send a blind copy to yourself so you can see them on your laptop. For my other readers, Jan is talking about using the BCC: field, which allows you to send to addresses without informing any of the other recipients on the email. She is simply putting her own address into the BCC: field so she gets a copy of the email. The other recipient or recipients never see that she did this. But Jan, in a properly set up email account that uses IMAP, any device that accesses the account has the same view of the mail server. Any message sent or received while using any device is automatically and instantly visible on every other device that accesses the account. IMAP supports using folders and sub-folders, and these too appear to all devices using that account.
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