Tonight, I lost 15,000+e-mails, my contacts and the research files for my Truman book

The last couple of hours have been extremely depressing for me.

It started when I decided to scan my e-mail on my iPhone and found I needed to re-enter my password.

I was not sure what my password was so I tried a couple, they did not work and I clicked on the message telling me to reset my password.

There was an area showing part of my phone number and giving me two choices- type in the last four numbers of the phone number for a text message or type them in for a call. I opted for the text message and nothing happened.

I tried it again and once again nothing happened.

Another message indicated I could try another sign-in and it showed me my gmail address, so I had a verification code sent to my phone.








When I signed in to my hotmail, I discovered, much to my horror, that my e-mail address was now a brand new account.

In the space of a few moments, I had lost everything.

The Hotmail address I use is the first email I ever had and I have had it since 2000.. I have folders fro all of the e-mails I have received dating back to various news tips. from former students and from long time friends and news sources, approximately 15,000 to 20,000 e-mails in all.

-All of my e-mail contacts had vanished.

-The folder I created for the book I am writing about Harry Truman and Lamar was a thing of the past.

-Information and documents about previous books I have written and ideas for future projects were no more.








-Nothing was in the inbox except a welcome from Outlook meaning all of the daily updates I receive from funeral homes, law enforcement agencies, the cities of Joplin and Springfield, Missouri Southern, the Joplin and Carthage school districts, plus daily Google News updates on various topics and daily e-mails from dozens of media sources, a list that took years to accumulate, would have to be restored, one painstaking address at a time.

Of course, you cannot call a Microsoft employee on the phone, or at least if you could, I could not figure out how to do it, so I began an e-mail exchange through gmail with a technician who gave me a step-by-step plan to restore my account.

As I looked at it, I thought, "this is not going to work. He is going to tell me none of my information can be retrieved and the last 19 years were lost forever.

I shifted to my laptop and when I clicked on the open window with Hotmail, it had that same message. When I signed in through that gmail account with the new password it took me to that new account.

Out of desperation, firmly resolved to begin recreating what I could of newsletters and e-mail lists as quickly as possible, I returned to the iPhone and once more I tried to sign in Hotmail. I used the old passwords that I could remember and, of course, they did not work.

I recreated the steps I had taken an hour earlier. I followed the steps to create a new password and clicked for it to send me a text message.

Nothing happened.

I looked again to make sure I had written the four numbers properly. I had, but suddenly a ray of sunshine brightened my evening.

Of course, it did not work- I was trying to send a text message to my landline phone.

I clicked for it to call me with my verification number. The phone rang, I wrote down the numbers, then typed them in and created a new password.

With a sense of foreboding, I signed in to my Hotmail account.

EVERYTHING WAS THERE!

Except for an hour of my time, nothing had been lost.

Though I am sure the Microsoft technician was unable to see the sheepish expression on my face as I sent him a reply and told him what happened, I really did not care.

I feel like a fool, but I have a feeling I will get over it.