ITS Documentation
IMAP E-Mail Restore Policy
R1456 • November 2007

If you use the ITS IMAP e-mail service and you accidentally delete e-mail messages or folders, ITS can restore them for you as long as they have not been gone for more than a week. There is a fee for this service. This document explains which messages/folders are potentially recoverable under what circumstances and how you can request restoration of them.

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Which Messages/Folders Are Potentially Recoverable

Mail that has been in your mailbox, no matter which folder it was in, within the last seven days is potentially recoverable. If an e-mail message, an e-mail folder, or a mailbox has been deleted for over a week, it is no longer recoverable.

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Some Things to Try Yourself

You might be able to retrieve the lost message yourself and save the cost of having it restored by ITS. Here are a few things you can try.

  • Check the folder where your e-mail program stores deleted messages before expunging or purging them. It might be called Trash or Deleted Messages or something like that. The name depends on what program you use.

  • Check your Sent Mail folder. Perhaps you quoted the lost message in a reply and can retrieve it that way.

  • If the message was sent to several people, see if one of them still has it and could send you a copy.

  • Check to see if you kept a printed copy of the message somewhere.

  • Check your Junk, Spam, or SpamBox folder in case a message you were expecting but did not receive was mistakenly put there.

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Requesting a Mail Restore

To request a mail restore, contact the ITS Accounts Office, provide detailed information about the mail you need restored, and pay the fee.
Mail Restoration Fees
IMPORTANT! Payment must be made prior to the restoration. The fee is assessed regardless of whether or not the recovery is successful.

  • $50 to Retrieve Deleted E-Mail and/or Whole E-Mail Folders. Note that all previously deleted messages for the folder you request will show up back in that mail folder, so you may need to re-delete some unwanted messages.

    You can think of this type of mail restore as unexpunging or unpurging messages. Messages will be marked as read and put back into the folder from which they were deleted.

    The fee will be waived for the first request only. That is, you may have one free mail restore done. After that, all mail restores you request must be paid for in advance.

  • $50 to Retrieve Old IMSP Preference Files or Address Books from Tape.
    • Mulberry users only. Mulberry, if configured according to the instructions provided by ITS, stores its preferences on an IMSP server. It can also be configured to store its addressbook there. These can then be retrieved from tape backups of the server data.

  • $200 to Retrieve Archived Mailboxes from Tape. This type of restoration is done only for entire mailboxes that have been deleted. Mailboxes are deleted, for example, when people leave the University and are no longer eligible for the Basic Computing package. People are provided with notifications via e-mail well before their mailboxes are deleted, so this type of restoration is seldom needed.

    Backups of entire mailboxes are done on a nightly basis, and the most recent seven backups are kept. There is no guarantee that the messages or e-mail folders that you want restored would be on a particular backup tape. They could, for example, have been created and deleted between backups. This method of restoration will recover the snapshot that was taken on the particular night that the backup was done.

Required Information
If you would like to proceed with a restore request, please provide the following information to the ITS Accounts Office:

  1. Name of the folder(s) that contained the deleted messages you want restored. Please spell the folder name exactly as it was spelled in your folder list (for example, INBOX, sent-mail, Saved Messages).

  2. Whether you deleted

    1. the whole e-mail folder(s).

    2. only some messages within the folder(s).

  3. Date and time of the deletion.

  4. E-mail program you used (for example, Webmail, Mulberry, Outlook, Thunderbird).
Contacting the Accounts Office
You can talk with an Accounts Office representative in-person at the U-M Computer Showcase in the Michigan Union during Showcase hours (listed at the top of the Showcase web page).

You can phone the Accounts Office Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., at (734) 764-8000, Option 3.

Every attempt will be made to recover the messages in a reasonable period of time. Requests are only processed during business hours, Monday through Friday. There is no guarantee that your lost messages will be on the backup system. You will be notified by e-mail once the restore process is complete.

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Additional Resources

Visit ITS's Information System to obtain ITS computer documentation and other resources.

We welcome your comments; please send e-mail.

ITS's Online Help Desk provides a variety of computing help resources.

For further help with e-mail restoration, contact the ITS Accounts Office.

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