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How to Restore Mail to the Mail Server

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› Outlook › Email › How to Restore Mail to the Mail Server

Last reviewed on January 26, 2015     152 Comments

A common mistake many users who keep copies of their email in their POP3 mailbox make when setting up a new email account is forgetting to change the setting to leave mail on the server, so Outlook downloads and deletes it from the server.

If this happens to you, you can restore the deleted mail to the server only if you have IMAP access to your mailbox.

Using IMAP to restore mail to the server

When you email account supports IMAP, you can restore mail to the server in a few simple steps:

  1. Create a second email account in your profile using the IMAP account type.
  2. You'll now have two accounts in your profile for the same email account, with the IMAP account adding a second *.pst to the profile.
  3. Make sure you set the POP3 account to leave mail on the server in the account's More Settings. Advanced dialog.
  4. Drag the messages from the POP3 Inbox to the IMAP folder's Inbox.
  5. Tip: You may want to start with about 100 messages at a time and wait a minute or so for the messages to sync up. If it works well, select a larger block of messages to move in the second batch.

  6. The messages will be synced with the mailbox on the server.
  7. When finished, remove the IMAP account from the profile. (unless you want to use it instead of POP3.)

Gmail: configure the account for IMAP in your GMAIL settings then setup the email account in Outlook. Gear icon, Mail settings, Forwarding and POP/IMAP link)
Yahoo: use imap-ssl.mail.yahoo.com for the IMAP server name. In Outlook 2007 and 2010 you need to create the account manually.

Hotmail: although Hotmail does not support IMAP, you can use the Outlook Hotmail Connector to upload mail to the server.

Note that both Gmail and Hotmail make it difficult for Outlook to delete mail from the server. If Outlook deleted downloaded email from either account, check your settings in the account online and configure it to archive mail downloaded using POP3.

If your mail server doesn't support IMAP

If your email account does not support IMAP, you can't easily restore mail to the server unless it can POP email from other servers. In this case, you could upload the mail to another server then POP it back to your original email account. If this is not possible and you need online access to the mail you downloaded, consider using Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo to store it online for you.

If your account can collect mail from POP accounts (like Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail do), you can upload the mail using IMAP then your account can collect it using POP3. Before using this method, verify your POP3 account can collect mail from the IMAP server - GMail and Hotmail require SSL for POP3 services and many accounts do not use SSL when "popping" accounts.

  1. Create an account that supports both POP3 and IMAP.
  2. Use the instructions above to put the mail online.
  3. Go to your mail account's web access and configure the account to collect POP mail from the new account.
  4. Once the messages are back online in your mailbox, delete the POP account from the online configuration and the IMAP account from Outlook.

Restoring Exchange Server mail to the server

If this happens with an Exchange server account, set the Exchange account as the default delivery location and drag any mail that does not resync with the Exchange mailbox back to the mailbox.

How to Restore Mail to the Mail Server was last modified: January 26th, 2015 by Diane Poremsky

Related Posts:

  • Using Multiple IMAP or Outlook.com Accounts and Data Files (*.pst)
  • We'll be adding more issues to this page for Outlook users who send an
    Internet Mail Issues with Outlook
  • To Leave Internet Messages on the Server
  • Online Services in Outlook: Gmail, Yahoo, iCloud, AOL, GoDaddy

About Diane Poremsky

A Microsoft Outlook Most Valuable Professional (MVP) since 1999, Diane is the author of several books, including Outlook 2013 Absolute Beginners Book. She also created video training CDs and online training classes for Microsoft Outlook. You can find her helping people online in Outlook Forums as well as in the Microsoft Answers and TechNet forums.

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Fazihuzzamaan Rasheed (@guest_215950)
September 24, 2020 3:42 am
#215950

very interesting. saved my day. Thank you.

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Richard (@guest_213357)
June 3, 2019 7:27 pm
#213357

Talk Talk upgraded my email service and lost all my 2000 emails prior to the upgrade on 20 Jan 2019. I've followed the advice here and now restored them by creating an IMAP account in Outlook 2003 and also a POP account, then copying an old pop backup into the inbox to transfer to the IMAP account inbox which had uploaded them to the Talk Talk server.

Since January Talk Talk have been unable to provide a solution and the advice on here has worked perfectly. I can't thank you enough. I'm an old guy so don't regard myself as good with IT, and it's such a relief to have found your advice. Thank you so much.

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DAVID HOWARD (@guest_213305)
May 25, 2019 10:46 am
#213305

I'm afraid I didn't understand most of that. Like many computer users I don't have a degree in IT.

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Reply
Diane Poremsky(@diane-poremsky)
Author
Reply to  DAVID HOWARD
May 25, 2019 11:07 am
#213306

You need to set the account up as an imap account and import mail because only imap accounts will sync up to the server.

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sam (@guest_212297)
November 20, 2018 1:34 pm
#212297

really useful post, thanks all. I have tried to add a second account however ti says "account already added" There doesn't seem to be a way around this. Does anybody know how to add a second account if you get this error message?

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Reply
Diane Poremsky(@diane-poremsky)
Author
Reply to  sam
November 25, 2018 11:32 pm
#212321

Current versions of Outlook won't let you add an address twice. if you have the mail in a pst, you can use the pst without adding the account to outlook twice.

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Ivan (@guest_211646)
August 4, 2018 4:07 am
#211646

Problem: pc lost, express 2007 configured to delete messages from server (gmail)... How can I access those emails??? Thanks

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Reply
Diane Poremsky(@diane-poremsky)
Author
Reply to  Ivan
November 25, 2018 11:53 pm
#212322

If you don't have a pst or backup of the messages and they were deleted from gmail, they are gone for good. Sorry.

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Lisabelle66 (@guest_211529)
July 18, 2018 4:08 am
#211529

I am trying to create a second email account in my profile using the IMAP account type. I get an error message saying "This email address has already been added." I'm using Outlook. Is there any way around this?

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Ali (@guest_209661)
December 15, 2017 7:48 am
#209661

Hi Diane,
Hope you can help me.

I was trying to import my emails from outlook.com to my Gmail account. I forgot to do "leave mail on the server", and now I have the emails in gmail, but they are deleted in outlook.com. I figured this out half way and changed the setting, but the recent emails were already deleted in outlook.com. I would be thankful if you could help me to get them back to the outlook.com account.

I was reading your instruction, but I got confused. So you were instructing to "1.Create a second email account in your profile using the IMAP account", but how can I create an IMAP account in gmail. The IMAP is enabled in gmail. And also should I create a seperate IMAP account on outlook.com?

I do not want to move all the messages from gmail to outlook.com, just the ones which have been moved from outlook.com to gamil. So I am confused how to choose which ones should be moved to outlook.com?

I will be grateful if you could help me.

Thanks,
Ali

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Reply
Diane Poremsky(@diane-poremsky)
Author
Reply to  Ali
December 31, 2017 8:10 pm
#209809

Sorry I missed this earlier - did you look in the deleted items folder or deleted items recovery? If they weren't there, you'd need to have both the outlook.com account (as Microsoft Exchange) and the gmail account (as imap) and copy messages between accounts.

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Elizabeth Goldfarb (@guest_206844)
May 29, 2017 11:13 pm
#206844

Why do my emails not go through, getting returned
I see no good reason whatsoever.

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Reply
Diane Poremsky(@diane-poremsky)
Author
Reply to  Elizabeth Goldfarb
May 29, 2017 11:32 pm
#206845

The messages are bouncing? What does the return message say?

0
0
Reply

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