Spark email client - are draft emails backed up anywhere during composition?

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Spark email client - are draft emails backed up anywhere during composition?

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PeteS

40 posts

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#1858819 5-Sep-2017 11:30

"Are people just expecting too much from webmail ?"

Dont think so.
Virtually everyone in my business and personal circle is on webmail and the convenience, especially travelling international, of being able to go on any internet browser and communicate is priceless.
Of more importance is the level of service the SMX - Spark Xtra webmail has to compete with. Gmail is fairly reliable whereas SMX is proving to be a bit of a dud and thats saying something after what yahoo inflicted on us. Only this morning we cannot access Xtra email and its taken hours for Xtra to even put up this note on their outage website.

"All customers are unable to log into the Smartphone App or MySpark Digital to access account information, make changes or make payments. Customers are also unable to log into Xtra email. The issue started at 05/09/2017 07:40. Our Spark techs are working on it right now and we are hoping to have it fixed for you as quickly as possible."

I note its just changed to -

"We are currently experiencing issues with Xtramail. The issue started at approx 05/09/2017 7:40. Our engineers are working on it right now and we are hoping to have it fixed for you as quickly as possible. "

A better question might be.... What percentage of the client base needs to get inconvenienced before Spark or SMX publicly admits they have a problem ?

tdgeek

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#1858839 5-Sep-2017 11:56

PeteS:

"Are people just expecting too much from webmail ?"

Dont think so.
Virtually everyone in my business and personal circle is on webmail and the convenience, especially travelling international, of being able to go on any internet browser and communicate is priceless.
Of more importance is the level of service the SMX - Spark Xtra webmail has to compete with. Gmail is fairly reliable whereas SMX is proving to be a bit of a dud and thats saying something after what yahoo inflicted on us. Only this morning we cannot access Xtra email and its taken hours for Xtra to even put up this note on their outage website.

"All customers are unable to log into the Smartphone App or MySpark Digital to access account information, make changes or make payments. Customers are also unable to log into Xtra email. The issue started at 05/09/2017 07:40. Our Spark techs are working on it right now and we are hoping to have it fixed for you as quickly as possible."

I note its just changed to -

"We are currently experiencing issues with Xtramail. The issue started at approx 05/09/2017 7:40. Our engineers are working on it right now and we are hoping to have it fixed for you as quickly as possible. "

A better question might be.... What percentage of the client base needs to get inconvenienced before Spark or SMX publicly admits they have a problem ?

I dont get your complaint. You just gave two examples of them publically admitting there is a problem. My webmail is fine, MySpark is down. So they will fix it one has to assume :-)

PeteS

40 posts

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+1 received by user: 18

#1858853 5-Sep-2017 12:19

"I dont get your complaint."

The point is it took more than 2 hours for the first message to appear.

I am guessing that when most people arise or get to work email is usually one of the first things we switch on.

I will guarantee there was a spike in phone calls to Spark faults between 8am and 9am.
I saw the Spark call back wait time go to 149 minutes.

Because I dont Twit Face, who knows what social media is saying.

Anyway this is getting off topic, Apologies to moderators.

tdgeek

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#1858862 5-Sep-2017 12:26

PeteS:

"I dont get your complaint."

The point is it took more than 2 hours for the first message to appear.

I am guessing that when most people arise or get to work email is usually one of the first things we switch on.

I will guarantee there was a spike in phone calls to Spark faults between 8am and 9am.
I saw the Spark call back wait time go to 149 minutes.

Because I dont Twit Face, who knows what social media is saying.

Anyway this is getting off topic, Apologies to moderators.

As it was clearly not everyone, maybe a smaller number, maybe thats why. I never knew. If anything does fail, I know they will know a will any ISP, and they will be onto it, I;d never join the 5000 callers to ask why

cheshirecat

50 posts

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+1 received by user: 18

#1858997 5-Sep-2017 14:28

lardyl:

Yeah I used to use and love Eudora and it was fine until they pulled the POP servers...

I'm pretty sure the POP3 servers are still there and working. However they did remove support for older (presumably less-secure) encryption schemes, and for plaintext logins, which killed off some older software and many XP-based clients. That might be your problem. However, IMAP is way better than POP3, if you can get a client you like (Thunderbird handles it pretty well for me and can link to the calendar and contacts, too)

Any comments are my own personal opinion and should not be taken to be that of my current or previous employers

...

cheshirecat

50 posts

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#1859017 5-Sep-2017 14:42

Anonyming:
b) When I reply to a mail, there is nowhere I can save it. I got to finish it and send it. Most times I want to bring in links or continue later, then that mail is gone; I have to go find it amongst my inbox and it could be weeks down the list. IF I AM LUCKY it it still there when I open the original mail, other times it is GONE, with so much written! There is nowhere you can save a reply
c) Nowhere in replies to change the subject.
d) On replies there is no option to attach a fille/doc etc. I have to open a brand new email and find the address, and there is no history. For business / trade etc it is important to have previous history, as it could be over a period of time.

I think you're confusing 'quick replies' (which are as you describe) and normal replies. If you click the reply icon (the arrow next to Compose) or 'reply all' then you get all these features, and you can save it to Drafts like a normal message (or autosave if you enabled that).

e) I use some of my drafts quite often, it is not meant to have a recipient. When I change the subject as in 'edit', nothing happens. I have to change it by 'forwarding' it, then got to go back to delete the previous draft on that subject.

This worked for me; created a draft and used 'Save', then double-clicked it to edit it, and could change the subject before either sending or saving it again. You have to click 'save' to update the subject in the draft though, it doesn't autosave. Incidentally, if drafts were autodeleted when sent, then that would cause you problems here when you want to re-use a draft multiple times.

Any comments are my own personal opinion and should not be taken to be that of my current or previous employers

...

HP

Shop now for HP laptops and other devices (affiliate link).

Anonyming

5 posts

Wannabe Geek
+1 received by user: 1

#1859275 5-Sep-2017 21:53

Thank you Cheshirecat, your advise taken, making drafts now so much easier! But no, I do want a draft deleted after I've sent it (often to myself as it's re my research/studies). When I have new data to add I would go to the folder, click forward and continue to work on that topic, and often keeping it in drafts for a while as I add data/info.
* When editing it doesn't give me a one-line space but jumps paragraph spaces with vertical lines down on left.
* Editing drafts then is difficult -the history / previous writing in a draft, is in a dim grey which is hard to read.

I agree whole-heartedly with PeteS - search keywords is almost a waste of time. Is there a chance xtra SMX will look into it?

Re my LOST MAILS AND FOLDERS; I had over 3000 mails, _+50 folders of around ten years, and lost it ALL on 7 August, my account was a blank! I admit I should have used a program like Windows Outlook/Express? and not only use webmail, I did not think of it, am rather IT ignorant. Still - they should not have lost it - this was long after migration and all went well for months after migration! It feels like my house with library burnt down, thousands of hours just gone in a wink of an eye. Won't go into it, but it was not only correspondence I wanted to keep, some business-related, but mainly included intense research and studies over past four years which I've saved in folders, making notes with references and links as I go.

After THREE weeks of calls, chat-desk, people from o/seas helpdesk, even SMX themselves, getting nowhere, tier 2 replied they can't get it back. In this (one and only response) devastating email I got from them on 1Sept they advised to "go to Settings --> Email (ensure advance settings is selected) --> Click on IMAP subscriptions --> if the emails are on the server/webmail then it will appear there." NOW; if I don't have a program for my mail - is there a way I can get it back, should I continue pushing this issue with them (what's the point) but at least I want an answer - how did it happen?! I feel floored.

What am I to do - please help!?

1101

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#1859566 6-Sep-2017 11:44

PeteS:

"Are people just expecting too much from webmail ?"

Dont think so.

OK perhaps then...
are people expecting too much from FREE ISP's email in general

If its that important, surely move to a paid service with a known level of uptime, reliability, features & backups

1101

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#1859572 6-Sep-2017 11:51

Anonyming:

After THREE weeks of calls, chat-desk, people from o/seas helpdesk, even SMX themselves, getting nowhere, tier 2 replied they can't get it back

won't is more likely . ?
Im pretty sure , by NZ law, they have to keep records of all emails in case the ~authorities~ need to have a look at them.
I'd find it hard to believe they dont have any sort of backups. Perhaps they just wont put in the time to recover them on the 'free' email service

admittedly , thats not much help sorry

perhaps Yahoo can recover something . from when @xtra was hosted at yahoo ?
worth a try ?

cheshirecat

50 posts

Geek
+1 received by user: 18

#1859813 6-Sep-2017 16:48

Anonyming:

they advised to "go to Settings --> Email (ensure advance settings is selected) --> Click on Change IMAP subscriptions --> if the emails are on the server/webmail then it will appear there." NOW; if I don't have a program for my mail - is there a way I can get it back, should I continue pushing this issue with them (what's the point) but at least I want an answer - how did it happen?! I feel floored.

These instructions tell you how to change the IMAP subscriptions in the Xtra Webmail. Click the top-right hamburger menu, and select 'Settings'. Then choose 'Email'. At the bottom of the page is the "Change IMAP Subscriptions" button. Click that, and you can open a tree of all the mail folders on the server for your ID, including hidden ones.

If you do this, you may see unsubscribed folders that you can check for your missing email; if a folder had its index damaged and disappeared, it may reappear in here, unchecked by default. Other IMAP mail clients will have similar settings, somewhere. I can't make a guess at how it happened, though.

Anonyming

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Wannabe Geek
+1 received by user: 1

#1859956 6-Sep-2017 21:06

You guys, I GOT MY FOLDERS BACK!!! Unexplainable, a miracle, just out of the blue tonight when I opened emails, I believe in a god again! Thank you whoever did whatever, and all your advise and concern for my sake, - much appreciated! My emails are still missing but that was not the most important. I am now to decide whether I will stay or go ... so scared it may happen again, but I will get it all on to a program now - Outlook. I suppose it's still better the devil you know...

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