Missing all my old hotmail emails and folders since the merge to outlook – HELP!!

I  was using GMAIL as my main email address and Hotmail as a secondary email. I wasn't actively using my Hotmail address in recent times but  I did have the hotmail account over a number of years which mean A LOT of emails that I wanted to keep. When the Hotmail account auto merged with outlook  I lost ALL of my emails going back YEARS. I tried the deleted recovery email that you suggested and it didn't work. I can't understand how hundreds of emails would simply disappear into cyberspace. I have no reason to believe my account was hacked. It just doesn't make sense that they could not be merged across? Please help me.