I have had a hotmail account for approx 13 years. I just checked back in one of my folders to find some personal email, only to find that the earliest 6 years of my account have been totally deleted without my permission! These were important personal emails carefully sorted for archival purposes. 

To head off any of your questions in reply:

- they were not deleted by myself

- I do not think my account has been hacked

- I sign in directly to Hotmail from a computer regularly and I do not think the account has ever been suspended due to lack of use - it's my main personal email account, used daily.

- I know for certain that emails have been deleted as I have several saved off to my computer dating from 2001. But this is a small percentage of my total email over such a long period. 

- I do not have any auto-Sweep settings that may have done this.

- neither have I renamed the account.

- I have tried the auto-recovery link given in the Help/FAQ section and it has only retrieved a bit of junk email from 2013.

Is there any way that you can restore my old emails? If not this is utterly outrageous and a disgrace on the part of Hotmail.

But I am temporarily suspending my outrage in the hope that there is something that can be done.