HELP!!!! Deleted POP mailbox & emails disappeared!!!

Hi everyone..

I'm using a MBP 2011 running Snow Leopard (10.6). I wanted to move my hotmail mailbox setup on Mail from POP to IMAP and in doing so I followed the instructions that said I had to first delete the existing POP mailbox before creating the new IMAP one.

So I deleted my mailbox, prompted the delete and I said yes, then I still saw the mailbox appearing on the left pane on Mail so I emptied the trash and when that didn't work I went to Mail > Pereference > Accounts and hit the ' - ' sign and it was finally removed from my Mail.

Now I setup the IMAP and it worked fine till I realized my entire inbox was deleted. I opened my hotmail account on web and my android and they both had no emails in inbox!!!!!!! All my emails are gone!!!! The only ones remaining where the emails in my folders and not my inbox (which amount to 1% of my emails 😟)

Is there anyway I can recover my email from my MBP or Hotmail or anything!!!! I'm not really tech savvy to use Terminal etc but I am willing to try anything...

I'd appreciate any help guys .... !

Thanks

Zan