Microsoft says lost Hotmail e-mails now restored

NEW YORK (AP) -- Microsoft Corp. said Monday that it has resolved a glitch that caused some Hotmail users to temporarily lose all of their e-mails.

A chorus of frantic people had posted complaints to the Redmond, Wash.-based company's online message board over the weekend, saying their messages had disappeared. In some cases, e-mails were mistakenly sent to their deleted mail folders.

Microsoft spokeswoman Catherine Brooker said Monday that all the affected users have their e-mails back. On Saturday, she noted that the problem only applied to a limited number of people. Microsoft would not say how many people's e-mails were lost.

"Microsoft is still investigating the root cause of what happened in this particular instance to prevent this from happening again," she said.

Hotmail is the world's most popular free Web-based e-mail service, with about 360 million users, according to Web traffic measurement group comScore Inc.

The online Hotmail message board has racked up 489 pages of complaints about lost and deleted e-mails dating back to early November.