MobileMe: Email service interruption

Resolution

As a first step toward restoring service, we restored web access to a portion of your MobileMe Mail account at 10:00 p.m. PDT, July 25. You can now log into me.com, and use the Mail web application to access all the messages you have received since the July 18 service outage. You can also compose, send, and receive new messages as normal. Please note that this interim solution does not provide access to any email messages received or saved before the outage began on July 18.

IMPORTANT: To avoid possible technical errors, please do not do any of the following until your email service is completely restored:

• Change your MobileMe password
• Create or change any MobileMe email aliases
• Change your MobileMe storage allocation

Any changes to these settings could cause errors in your email account including an inability to log in, bounced messages, or failed storage allocation adjustments.  Once your account is fully restored, you will be able to use these features again normally.  

If you have already changed your MobileMe password, change it back to what it was during the outage.

If you accidentally make changes to these settings, please contact MobileMe Support for assistance.

Your remaining messages and folders will reappear when the restoration of your account is complete, at which time we will also re-enable access from desktop mail applications, iPhone, and iPod touch. We expect to be finished with this process by next Friday but you may have complete access sooner.

While the vast majority of your email messages will be fully restored, a small percentage of email messages in the affected accounts have regrettably been lost. This includes approximately 10% of messages received between 5:00 a.m. PDT on July 16 and 10:20 a.m. PDT on July 18. We sincerely apologize for any email messages you may have lost.

Recovering lost email messages

If you regularly check your MobileMe email with a desktop email application (e.g. Mail on a Mac; Outlook, Outlook Express, or Windows Mail on a PC) and use Time Machine or another backup solution, you may be able to restore any messages lost during this service outage.  Once your mail service is restored, simply find the messages on your local machine or in your backup volume and drag them to the MobileMe inbox on your desktop mail application.

If you use Mac OS X Mail and Time Machine

1. Make sure your Mac is connected to your Time Machine backup drive.
2. Open Mail on your Mac.
3. Launch Time Machine.
4. Inside of Time Machine, select the folders or messages you would like to restore and click “Restore.”  Time Machine will add a new folder to Mail called “Time Machine” that contains your recovered messages.
5. Drag the recovered messages to your MobileMe inbox and they will be synced to the MobileMe Mail server.  Once complete, your messages have been restored.

If you access your MobileMe email exclusively via me.com

If you access your MobileMe Mail exclusively at me.com, there’s nothing for you to do.  Your account will be restored, but you will not be able to retrieve any messages that may have been lost from your account.