Emails missing for three days

E-mails
1

Hello,

I am contacting you regarding an issue encountered when migrating my mailbox from a MX Plan 5 Go offer to a Zimbra Pro 50 Go offer.

Chronology of events

  • My mailbox had reached saturation (5.06 GB / 5 GB).
  • From that moment on, I did not receive any email for about 2 to 3 days.
  • During that period, I performed several tests by sending emails to myself from a Gmail address. Those messages were never received.
  • The senders did not seem to receive a failure notification (such as Mailbox full or Quota exceeded).
  • I did not receive any alert indicating that my mailbox was approaching or had exceeded its storage quota.
  • I then subscribed to a Zimbra Pro 50 Go offer and performed the migration using OVH’s migration tool.
  • Since the migration, reception works perfectly again: new emails arrive immediately.

Issue encountered

However, all emails sent during the period when the mailbox was saturated are permanently missing.

For example, a test email sent from Gmail on July 17 2026 at 7:32 p.m. was never received, whereas a new test performed after the migration arrived instantly.

My request

Could you please:

  • help me view the SMTP logs for my email address for the period when the mailbox was saturated (approximately July 15 to 18 2026);
  • tell me what happened to the messages sent during that period (rejected, queued, lost during migration, or other);
  • explain why no quota alert was sent to me before or during the mailbox saturation;
  • check if there is a way to recover the emails that seem to have disappeared.

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

If you need more information, please do not hesitate.

2

Hello @atmel500

I assume that all emails that arrived in your mailbox but were not displayed in your mail client are considered lost.

Normally the senders of those messages would have received a bounce message with an error code indicating that your mailbox was full.

3

Hello Gaston,

Thank you for the response, however I tried sending myself multiple emails from different addresses and never got any bounce‑back messages such as “mailbox full” or anything else. Hence my original question.

4

Hi @atmel500

When a mailbox exceeds its quota, the mail server usually rejects new messages (with a temporary error code) or queues them, and generates a notice to the sender. The fact that you didn’t receive any alert and the senders didn’t get failure notifications suggests that the overload might not be the only cause, but a symptom of a larger problem :smirking_face:

I think the combination of the overload and the migration suggests that the emails could have been lost due to a synchronization issue between the old server and the new one.

Let’s see if Support can send you those logs to check the actual state of the emails.

Let us know, cheers.
Sergio Turpín