|
The #1 Email Emergency Call I Get, and How You Can Solve It on Your Own
The Problem
Has this ever happened to you?
Your email has been working fine for a long time, when all of a sudden, for no apparent reason, messages have randomly disappeared, most often from your Inbox. You find yourself in a growing panic, with important conversations, projects, deadlines, and appointments in complete disarray or totally missing.
What happened? Is it a virus? A hacker? A problem with your email service or your internet connection? Software or hardware failure?
In my experience, in almost every case the actual problem is much simpler, but because it’s so far outside of most users’ email habits, they just can’t recognize what happened on their own.
Background
First, here’s the likely context:
- Whether you’re using a Windows computer or a Macintosh, a “regular” email program (like Microsoft Outlook or Apple Mail) or “webmail” (on a website like Gmail.com, AOL.com, Xfinity.com), you are probably used to viewing your email messages sorted by Date, most likely with the newest messages first. This habit has been ingrained in you for years, probably ever since you started using email.
- As a result, you’ve probably also never thought about sorting your messages (even temporarily) by any of the other columns in the list, e.g., From, Subject, the “paperclip” (whether the message has an attachment), Size, etc.
In my advice below, when I write the word “click,” I mean “single, left-click” with your mouse or trackpad.
What probably happened
It’s likely that:
- You accidentally clicked on one of the other column titles, e.g., “Subject,” so your email program interpreted this as your intentional request to change how your messages are sorted in the current folder, most likely your Inbox.
- This drastically changed the way the list of messages was arranged, from chronological (by Date) to alphabetical (for example) if you accidentally clicked a text column like Subject.
- All of your messages are actually still present, but because they are now arranged in a vastly different way, you get the extremely disorienting impression that numerous messages have disappeared.
- When you’re working with your email, you probably spend most of your time in your Inbox, so that’s where this problem typically occurs.
The simple solution
Here’s how you can recognize the problem and fix it:
- If you look closely at the email column titles (the actual words “Received,” “Date,” “From,” “Subject,” etc. across the top), you’ll probably see a little up- or down-arrow (most likely resembling a “v” or “^”) just after that word. That indicates both which column controls the sort order and whether that order is increasing or decreasing.
- Simply clicking directly on the “Date” or “Received” column title word will change the sort order back to what you probably prefer to see.
- After clicking on that word, the new sorting with then use the correct column (e.g., “Received”). However, if the order is reversed from what you want (e.g., it’s newest-last and that’s not what you want), simply click that column title one more time and the sort order will reverse.
- You may also need to scroll to the top (for a newest-first list) or the bottom (for a newest-last list) to see the newest messages.
Platforms where this problem usually doesn’t occur
Note that:
- In the email apps on an iPhone, iPad, or Android, the tiny screen display usually doesn’t use columns or show any column titles. As a result, changing the sort order takes multiple taps or involves tapping-and-holding, which in turn makes it much less likely that one stray tap can trigger this problem.
- In particular, the Gmail.com webmail interface only sorts your messages by date, newest first, so if that’s where you access your email, technically you’re immune from this problem.
Other possible explanations and solutions
There are a few other things that can happen to your email that can be similarly disorienting, including:
- Your Inbox is unintentionally separated into Categories. This is a relatively new “feature” in Gmail.com, the Apple Mail app on the iPhone/iPad, and others, sometimes turned on by default or without your consent. It arbitrarily separates your incoming mail into Promotions, Social, Updates, etc., which means that at any given moment you will only see a portion of your Inbox. How to turn this option off (so you’ll once again see your entire Inbox) will depend on which email system you’re using.
- You’re accidentally looking at the wrong folder or mailbox or label, e.g., you intended to look at your Inbox but instead you’re in Sent messages.
- Your email program is set up to show multiple accounts, and you’re accidentally looking at the wrong account, e.g., you intended to look at your Gmail account but instead you accidentally clicked on your Yahoo.
- A search that you performed earlier (e.g., “show all messages to or from John Smith”) is inadvertently still active, so you’re only seeing those matching messages, not the entire list. You’ll need to clear that search so you can once again see all of your messages, typically by either removing the words comprising your search criteria or by clicking a little “x” nearby.
- You accidentally clicked on a (typically unlabeled) icon that filters the list to show only your unread messages, hiding all of your already-read emails. You would then typically click that icon again to “toggle” that filter off.
- The column that you need (“Date,” “Received”) in order to sort the way you prefer is missing. I’ve seen this most often in the desktop version of Microsoft Outlook on Windows. I’ve typically fixed this either by adding the desired column back, or by finding another folder with your preferred collection of columns and then applying its “view” to the problematic folder. Use the “apply view to folder” search below to learn more.
- You may have changed your email password but you didn’t update your email software, cutting off its access to your account.
- If your email account is part of a paid service, your credit card may have expired (or been canceled due to a breach) or your subscription may have ended, suspending your ability to operate your email.
Where to go from here
As always, if any of my advice seems too difficult to follow, I recommend that you find someone you know and trust who can help you.
In the searches below, “X” is the name of your email service or software, e.g., “Gmail,” “AOL”, “Outlook,” “Apple Mail,” etc.
|
