Could you have meant to delete one e-mail only to accidentally click the tick box for the email next to it? The one you wanted?

There's no "tick box" involved. That's a big reason I use SeaMonkey or FireFox rather than IE, to avoid IE's miserable email interface. In SeaMonkey, in FireFox, and in Netscape, you highlight the subject line (or enter into the message) and DELETE, and it's gone to TRASH. But then it would be in TRASH, which does not empty for a long time, if ever. Even though the oldest TRASH messages are eliminated automatically, the missing messages were discovered to be missing within minutes to a day after last use, and the errant email would still be in TRASH, which they certainly seem not to be.

Similarly with declared spam messages. Click on the appropriate dot, and it's gone to JUNK, where it will be for a longish time, like maybe 60 days. The same is true with messages the antispam program declares as spam. Even if you DELETE a message in the JUNK folder, it merely goes to TRASH, and is maintained there according to the TRASH rules referred to above.

The missing messages (unless my wife and I are both blind) are not in my INBOX, nor in TRASH, nor in JUNK, nor in DRAFTS, nor in SENT, nor in UNSENT.

In order for us to entirely delete a recent email, we'd have to delete it from the TRASH directory. Then it would be gone entirely, and for good. Sure, in theory this could happen, but I seldom or never do that, and I'd bet heavy money that my Beautiful Wife has never done so.

Weirder and weirder!

Dave Oesterreich