Old Android won't save outgoing email account changes

[BeadKnit]

Hi, I'm looking for some help in finding what I'm guessing is a "save" function I can't see on my phone. Or...something else?

As of this evening, something changed with my email. I can no longer send anything.

Something has apparently changed with my server. I now have new info that works fine on a computer, but won't work at all on the phone.

The problem is that when I change to the new settings on my Android, I get an "authentication failed" message. When I go back into settings they've reverted to the old settings. I don't see a "save" anywhere, though.

Is there a save function that I'm missing? I can input the same information 10 times, even more, but it does the same thing, it says "authentication failed," then when I return to settings, they've reverted back to the old ones.

If there isn't a save function, why does it keep reverting back every time I enter the new settings?

Thank you in advance!

 

[BeadKnit]

*reverted, not revered!

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! "Authentication Failed" usually means a problem with the password, or with 2 step authentication. Which email provider is it?

 

[BeadKnit]

Thanks! It's a private server, not anything like Gmail or Yahoo. The password is correct. But I think the problem has to do with the fact that my phone definitely isn't saving the changes. It's like there's a save function...but I just can't see it.

 

[B. Diddy]

Have you already tried completely removing the account from the email app, then adding it back?

 

[BeadKnit]

No, for two reasons. One, I can't even change the incoming mail settings - I only want to change outgoing for now because my husband changed incoming settings on his phone and he lost all of his emails that were stored in the account. It was only by changing back to the old incoming mail settings that his email returned to his mailbox.

Two, if I remove the entire account, I'm afraid I'll lose all of the mail that's in the inbox along with the ever-growing number of emails that are waiting to be sent.

All I want to do is change outgoing email settings ONLY, so I can finally send mail for the first time in about 3 days.

 

[B. Diddy]

Is your incoming server POP3 or IMAP? If it's IMAP, then you won't lose anything, because the emails should still be on the server. Is there a webmail interface for your email where you can check to make sure the emails are still on the server?

It might be helpful to see a screenshot of the menu where you enter the Outgoing Server Settings (but make sure any identifying information is blurred out). http://forums.androidcentral.com/ge...ide-how-post-screenshots-android-central.html

 

[BeadKnit]

Hi, thanks so much! It's POP3, not IMAP. We did some extensive testing on this over the past few hours, but nothing worked. The settings never saved no matter how they were set. The old settings just stopped working, though, so I can't stick with that. If that were at least still working, I'd leave it alone instead of doing all of these shenanigans to get it to work. :-\

I'll try to get a screen shot and run it through the computer to remove identifying info. Problem is, I'd normally email this to the computer, but without being able to send, of course that's not going to work. :-\

 

[BeadKnit]

Well, I spoke too soon. My ***** husband changed my incoming mail settings, after we had a big discussion where I emphasized NOT to change them because I didn't want to lose the mail in my mailbox. So now I've completely lost ALL of my saved mail, including some critical things I needed that can't be replaced, and I STILL can't change the settings to send. So now my email is USELESS. I may as well not bother having an email account on my phone at all.

NOTHING will bring back my old email. His was recovered by changing the settings back. Mine won't recover at all.

 

[BeadKnit]

So now I have a new question before I can even think about tackling the original problem of sending mail. Is there a backup somewhere of my phone's email box, with starred items that can be restored, intact?

EVERYTHING is gone right now. I don't have sent mail, drafts...nothing. I can restore from the server, but that won't know which emails I've starred. Is there such a thing? The only reference I can find says it's backed up on gmail, but this isn't gmail, it's from an independent server.

I've previously restored files on an Android tablet, which had been erased when I had to rebuild the device, but that wasn't email, so I'm hoping there's somewhere the email can be restored as it was before my id**t husband messed up my phone.

Thanks in advance.

 

[B. Diddy]

Ugh, sorry to hear about that.:-\ Is there any kind of webmail interface for this email? Was the email app set to delete emails from the server once it downloaded to the phone?

Does your email server also have IMAP settings? If so, then in the future, I'd use those settings. The problem with downloading your emails on POP3 and keeping them only on your phone is that you still always run the risk of losing them, since your phone is not a completely reliable piece of hardware. It might get lost or damaged, or the hardware could fail without notice. (On POP3, you could always set it not to delete from the server, but that can become very confusing.)

 

[BeadKnit]

There is a copy on the server (daily backups); however, that copy doesn't include sent mail or drafts, of course. And the things that were starred will no longer be starred once restored. I star files so I know which ones to take care of right away and then delete once done.

The question is, does my phone still have a copy of the mail stored somewhere, perhaps on the phone itself, or does Google offer some kind of backup somewhere, as it did with the downloaded files I restored on the tablet after rebuilding that?

Or is it true that if I make any change at all to the server entry, it simply deletes everything off of the phone? Which doesn't make sense from a programming level. If it works at all like the iPhone, changing the settings back to the old ones should have restored everything. But in this case, I'm starting with a whole new mailbox. If I restore from the server, I only have incoming mail and I don't know which emails were marked. Sent mail will be gone, and drafts will also be gone. And then one other thing I noticed...I still have authentication errors. I don't want to touch the email app until this is resolved, but the fact that there possibly is mail that can't be sent indicates to me that the outbox is intact, which makes no sense at all if everything is gone from the phone.

Thanks so much.

 

[B. Diddy]

My understanding is that downloaded POP3 emails are stored in an SQLite database file in a protected system directory. I did a little searching and could not find any easy method of backing up or recovering those saved emails. This is why I usually recommend using IMAP whenever possible, since emails remain saved to the server, and the email app is simply syncing what's on the server. The entire contents of the server aren't being downloaded with IMAP -- only the email headers. If you open an email, you can see the email on the phone, but if you want to keep the email, you just let it remain on the server. It won't get saved permanently to the phone (so you don't have to worry about running out of storage).

 

[BeadKnit]

Okay, I did some reading and supposedly, Google makes backups; matter of fact, there's a setting on my phone that says I have full backups turned on. The info I found online (possibly from this site, I don't remember) said to go to "My Drive" and talks about then accessing backups from there. This is not how I managed to restore the files on that old Android tablet, but no matter.

Problem is, there never was a Google Drive app on my phone in the first place. So even though it says things are backed up, I can't even figure out how to access those backups to see if email is one of those things. I'm confused. Why did I not have a Google Drive app on my phone to begin with? After installing, why didn't it recognize my phone, since I accepted all of the nosy things it wanted, which should have included information about my Google account that should have all of my backups, though I have no idea if that's including email, since I can't see it at all.

So now that I'm completely frustrated and confused, how do I get this Google Drive app to access the account with the things that definitely are backed up according to my phone? Or how do I look at what's backed up without the Google Drive app, as I'd rather uninstall this intrusive, nosy thing that does no good?

Why is Google keeping backups on something I can't even access? Seems like that's ultra intrusive, to keep all of my info backed up, but keep it locked away from me so I can't access it at all.

Where is this info stored and how do I get either this app or my phone or something to say where my backups are and let me look through them to see if my emails are there?

Thank you for your time.

 

[B. Diddy]

I don't believe the standard Google Backup includes actual emails. It's for individual account information and settings. Even if it were saved there, you can't look through the backup data -- it's used when you set up a phone and select the option to restore from another phone.

 

[BeadKnit]

If this is true, how was I able to retrieve my saved files after restoring the Android tablet? They were there after a restore, when the entire tablet was wiped after an error that looked like a "dead Android." Very confused.

 

[B. Diddy]

That may depend on which saved files you're referring to. If you're talking about files that were synced to the cloud (like on Google Drive, or Google Photos), then those files are getting synced back from those cloud services, not Google Backup.

 

[BeadKnit]

No, these files weren't downloaded from Google Drive or Google photos. They were PDF patterns that I purchased from a site that sells patterns. Nothing related to Google. No cloud. I thought they were gone after the "dead Android," but I looked and they were there. I'm sure it had something to do with the backups Google makes, those mysterious things that are also selected to be backed up on my phone, but no access to them and no idea why they're even being saved if they can't be accessed.

 

[B. Diddy]

Does the tablet have an SD card? If the files were downloaded to the SD card (or moved there after the download), they wouldn't have been deleted with a factory reset.

 

[BeadKnit]

It does; however, the files weren't on the SD card at the time. Because I hadn't known how to move them at that point. I didn't find out until WELL after the restore. Matter of fact, I didn't find out until after at least the second restore, perhaps the third. THEN I moved them. But it was a moot point, because the files were backed up and when I did a search, I found information that said Google keeps downloaded files in a backup, which is why they weren't deleted...I don't remember what else was saved, though. I don't know if email was included. But that makes sense. Because there IS an option on my phone to have Google back up...I don't know what. It doesn't really say. If those backups do exist, this is what they're for, to restore what may be lost. I just have no idea how to access them. Nobody out there seems to know. But otherwise, why am I bothering to let Google back up my information? If it does NOTHING, I may as well turn off that option now, because it's completely useless if it doesn't exist to restore things after a problem, as with those backed up files. I literally thought they were gone, and I'd paid good money for them.

It would really be nice to know why Google is making backups if they're not available to be used. What's the purpose of a backup otherwise? To know it's out there but useless? It makes NO sense at all. And besides, IF there are server changes (which can happen even with public email, like Yahoo) and someone changes their settings but NOT their email address, it really is horribly poor programming to simply wipe everything out. A change in email address, sure, but not a change in server settings. Even a non-programmer like me can see that's patently ignorant.

When I change my settings to make email more (or less) secure on my home computer, I don't remove the mailbox and all of my stored mail. Why would I? The mail is still the mail. Inbox, saved, drafts, outbox, all still the same. It's the same email address, so why would I just delete everything?

And I've done exactly that, BTW. My email wasn't secure under the old settings, but when I switched to a new computer, I changed my settings to secure ones. And I KEPT my emails. Inbox, sent, drafts...there's no outbox, in this case, but I kept all three, plus any special folders to store certain emails. I didn't change the server settings and then say, "Oh, my, time to delete everything and start with completely empty mailboxes." Why would anyone do that?

And when I make a backup of my computer email (a la Google backups) I don't say, "I'm making a backup, but if I have a problem, I'm going to ignore their existence." Once there's a problem, I go to the backup and restore what's needed.

I even found an article online that said Google keeps said backups for a certain amount of time only, and if there's no usage, the backups expire. I'd really like to find where they're stored for my phone, so I can see if email is there and restore them. Preferably BEFORE Google's timed backups expire.
Here, this is the article:
https://www.theverge.com/tech/2017/...-delete-android-backups-two-months-inactivity
So there ARE Android backups! They actually exist!

Why doesn't anyone out there know how to access these mysterious backups?