I tried accessing my hotmail email inbox earlier today and was quite surprised to find it upgraded to an outlook.com account. While the new interface looks great and seems quite user-friendly, it had the slight drawback of having "deleted" all my previous emails.

We're talking about upwards of 10 years of emails including extremely important business correspondence just vanishing. I have read through multiple forums where users had similar complaints and am yet to find an exhaustive explanation or an effective solution.

I am using Windows 7 OS and Google Chrome browser. I have, thus far, taken the following steps, as suggested by Microsoft personnel in several of these forums:

1) Signed into my account within the last 365 days (account was created more than 10 years ago so its not a "new signing up" issue.) Also, I do NOT have a welcome email in my inbox.

2) "recover deleted messages" - did not work.

3) My account has not been hacked, nor have I left my PC unattended and inactive.

4) I have not manually deleted my emails of over 10 years.

5) I am not using an email client, third-party filtering, or other software to access / moderate / and or alter my account. Years ago my hotmail account changed or was upgraded or modified to Windows Live Mail, much in the same way as outlook.com has now come about. I'm not sure how or why that would count as an email client, particularly since I still just type www.hotmail.com in my address bar.

6) This link :http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windowslive/forum/files/all-my-emails-have-been-deleted-from-my-account/3b1ddf63-735c-45cf-8abf-6686fcc853b5 looked helpful but it's not working.

7) This link: https://col0-sec.mail.live.com/mail/MailMigrationSelectAccount.aspx?mms=client looks deceivingly like a solution (talks about migrating mail and contacts from Windows Live Mail to Outlook) but I am loath to trying this as I am using Outlook Express on my PC to manage a completely seperate account and am not sure what impact using this software will have on that arrangement. If you could provide some insight in this regard that might be helpful.

8) We're talking about several thousand emails so clicking "Show messages individually" is unlikely to solve this.

I am not quite certain when the account was switched to outlook.com, I have not tried to downgrade or deactivate my account at all, I've had no issues logging in, I have folders and some nested folders- all of which have also vanished.

It seems getting a private message from you chaps is the only way forward. I would be highly obliged if someone could please respond in an expedient fashion and help resolve this situation at the earliest.