What can I use to recover a lost email?

We tell you what software to use

Q

Some months ago I deleted an important item in my Yahoo Mail personal folder. Is there any program I can use to find and recover the lost email? G A Marques

A

You don’t say whether you use Yahoo Mail entirely in your browser, or via a client program, such as Outlook – and that makes a big difference. If you did use a client, the email may still be on your PC in some form. The best tool for finding it is the free version of Recuva ( www.piriform.com/recuva, pictured), from the maker of Ccleaner. It scours your PC for deleted files – including emails in Thunderbird, Outlook, Outlook Express or Windows Mail – and then lets you recover them. When downloading, click ‘Download from Piriform.com’. Do not click the Filehippo.com link, because its installer may contain junk. Some paid-for programs dig even deeper. Disk Doctors Undelete ( www.snipca.com/21800, £31.13) is so powerful you have to run it from a partition, away from your operating system and personal files. Only use in extreme data-loss emergencies.

No recovery tool can resurrect a file that was never on your PC in the first place. This will be the case if you use Yahoo Mail online. You could try searching your Yahoo Mail Trash folder, but if the email is several months old, it will have been deleted permanently. Yahoo may agree to roll back your account ( www.snipca.com/21799, click ‘Send a Restore Request’), but only by seven days.

Only contact Yahoo for help via its website or social media (@ Yahoocare on Twitter). You can’t contact them by phone. “Yahoo customer service” phone numbers on sites like www.contact-customercare.co.uk are PC support scams.