This article addresses the following issues related to missing email in Yahoo! Mail:

• Some or all messages in your Inbox, Sent, or other folders have disappeared.  
• Older messages are missing.
• Recently available emails may appear to have been deleted from your account.
• Unable to find previously read messages.
• Instant messages missing from conversation history

If emails are missing from your inbox, or messages are missing from your IM conversation history, the first step is to ensure that the messages haven't unexpectedly moved to a different folder. To rule this out, please do the following:

1. Check the Trash folder, and any other folders that you have set up. In some cases, email is unintentionally moved to a folder. Your folders are listed in the upper-left corner of the page in Yahoo! Mail; to open one, click on it.

2. Check your email filters. You'll want to ensure that a filter isn't directing certain emails to an unexpected place. To view your filters, click the gear icon in the upper-right corner of the page, and select Mail Options from the menu that appears (in Mail Classic, this is Options | Mail Options). Then select Filters from the options on the left.

3. Try using the search feature. If you know the name of the sender or recipient or a word from the subject line of a missing email, try running it through Mail Search to see if it's hiding within the account.

If that doesn't solve the issue, there are also three possible ways that the emails are sometimes deleted:

1. You deleted the emails on your mobile device. If you check email on a mobile device and you use IMAP, please be aware that IMAP syncs the two inboxes together. This means that if you delete them from your phone, it is also deleted from your Yahoo! Mail account.

2. You use an external mail client that deleted the emails.  If you have set up your email to POP to a client such as Outlook, Mac Mail, or Thunderbird, it is possible that the external mail account has deleted the messages from your mailbox and moved them to the Trash folder. If this is the case, consult the manufacturer of your mail client for assistance configuring your device settings to prevent this from recurring. See our article on how to set up your email client, which includes steps for how to set up Yahoo! Mail in a variety of email clients.

3. Your email account has been compromised. If you suspect that you account may have been accessed by a third party, please read this article to see the steps you should take immediately to protect your account.

Please note that we can help restore emails that have been deleted within the last 48 hours. To request a restore attempt, please fill out this form as soon as possible. When requesting a restore, it's important to be aware of the following details:

• We cannot restore a specific message within a folder
• We cannot restore a specific folder
• We can only restore messages that were lost in the last 48 hours, and we can’t guarantee a successful restore even in that time frame.
• The restore process causes your most recent emails and instant messages to be permanently deleted. When we perform a restore, we return your account to exactly the way it looked when your missing messages were there. Any emails sent or received after that time will be deleted, and cannot be retrieved.