Re: Can We Recover an Accidentally Deleted Folder? SOLVED

[dpm39560]

One of my best website clients accidentally deleted a folder full of important emails while in Roundcube.

Is there any way we can recover those emails for my client?

We have a website backup (Vaultpress for a WordPress website), but I don't think that covers emails. I've scoured the internet and drilled down into all the remaining folders in Roundcube webmail, but am coming up empty.

Any help would be a HUGE relief.

Thanks in advance if you can point us in the right direction.

[JohnDoh]

Roundcube is a web based IMAP client like Outlook or Thunderbird on your desktop. It does not have any backup functions built into it. The zipdownload plugin shipped with Roundcube can be configured to allow download of an entire folder but that is a user action so not really backup.

It's more reliable to take backups on the server side. So I dont think I have any good news for you. If you run the mail server and you are not backing up the data then its probably gone. If you dont run it, if you have a hosting provider or something, may be they have backups.

[dpm39560]

Thanks for the answer, John Doh. I got in touch with my server hosts, and they restored the backup, but no joy. Perhaps my client deleted the folder earlier than I thought she did and they restored the wrong backup. Still checking. If she says she just deleted it last night, as I expected, then you're right - the emails are probably gone forever.

[dpm39560]

After several frustrating hours of working with the client, several online sources, and my web host, we managed to solve this issue. Unfortunately, the client still doesn't really know what she did to accidentally delete the folder.

THE SOLUTION was that (a) the deleted folders were in HIDDEN folders. I could see these folders in CPannel File Manager by clicking on the Settings cog and checking the "Show hidden files" checkbox. All the hidden folders had their names start with a period. I took a screen shot of these folders and sent it to the client, who said, "These are the folders I was looking for!" And then (b) In RoundCube (that IS the topic of this board, right?), we went to SETTINGS, then clicked on FOLDERS, then we found an ARCHIVE folder and clicked on that, and there were the deleted folders! WOO! At that point, (c) we created a new folder called STORAGE, which I checked and verified we could see from the EMAIL tab of RoundCube, then (back in Settings>Folders) I dragged the target folders from ARCHIVE to STORAGE, and Presto!

The client now has her accidentally deleted folders back, and can once again see all the critical emails she thought she had lost.

Maybe this information will help someone else.