Have you ever been in a situation where you delete a bunch of emails to free up space in Gmail, only to realize later that you need some of those emails? This happens all too often, so how can you retrieve these deleted emails? Or are they simply lost forever?
In this article, we take a look at how to recover permanently deleted emails. We’ll be looking at what happens when you delete an email. We’ll also share a few different ways to retrieve your deleted emails. Keep reading to discover what to do if you accidentally delete an important email.
What Happens to Deleted Emails?
Many of us don’t think about what happens when we delete an email. After all, deleting an email is just removing it from your account, right? This isn’t the case with most email clients, specifically Gmail. Email providers like Gmail have a built-in safety net when it comes to deleting emails. This safety net allows users to recover emails if they accidentally delete them before the email vanishes forever.
When you delete an email in Gmail, it doesn’t just immediately vanish from your inbox and get lost in the void of cyberspace. Instead, that message is sent to your trash folder first. It will stay in this folder for 30 days before it’s permanently deleted. This means that you have 30 days after deleting an email to recover it easily. After this 30-day period, the email will be removed permanently, and then it becomes more difficult (and sometimes impossible) to recover.
What’s the difference between deleting and archiving an email?
Deleting and archiving emails aren’t the same thing, and yet they both serve a similar purpose. This purpose is to remove emails from your inbox. If you delete an email, it gets sent to the trash folder before being removed forever. You do this with emails you no longer want or need, such as promotional emails, newsletters, etc.
However, you may want to remove an email from your inbox but still have it available when you need to refer back to it. This can be useful for important emails such as letters from the bank, contracts, loans, insurance documents, and more. In this case, you’ll want to archive that email so that it’s removed from your inbox but not deleted.
5 Ways to Retrieve Deleted Emails From Gmail
Now that we understand what happens to our messages once we press delete, how do we get those emails back? Let’s look at five ways you can retrieve deleted emails from Gmail.
Method 1: Recovering Emails From Trash
One of the easiest ways to get back your deleted emails is through the Gmail trash recovery.
Step 1: Open Gmail
First, you’ll need to open Gmail on your computer. We recommend doing this on a computer because it’s a little easier, but you can use the same steps if you need to recover emails on your mobile device or tablet.
Step 2: Navigate to Your ‘Trash’ Folder
In the left-hand sidebar, click on the ‘More’ button with the arrow pointing down. This will show you more folders on your account, such as spam, trash, and any customized folders you created or that are created by a Gmail extension or add-on.
Step 3: Select the Email
The trash folder looks similar to your inbox but features all the emails you deleted in the last 30 days. Anything older than 30 days is removed permanently. Scroll through this list and find the email you want to retrieve and select it.
Step 4: Move to a Different Folder
Once you’ve selected the email, click on the ‘Move To’ button located in the top menu. The icon for this button is a file with an arrow pointing to the right. Once you’ve clicked on this button, choose where you want to move this email to, i.e., your inbox, archive, or another folder.
Method 2: Use the Editing/Deleting Filter
Have you created a filter to block certain email addresses, such as sales promotions, automatically? While this can be pretty useful if you receive a lot of annoying emails, it could also mean that valuable emails get flagged and deleted without you knowing. Let’s take a look at how you can check your filter settings and see if you’re accidentally deleting essential emails.
Step 1: Click on Settings
While in Gmail, click on the settings icon (a gear) in the top right of your screen. In the menu that opens, click on ‘See All Settings.’
Step 2: Select ‘Filters and Blocked Addresses’
Next, click on the ‘Filters and Blocked Addresses’ tab to see all the currently active filters on your account. Look for any filters that include the phrases ‘Delete it’ or ‘Skip Inbox.’
Step 3: Choose ‘Edit’ or ‘Delete’
You can edit these filters to change what happens with these emails so that they don’t accidentally get deleted. Or you can delete the filter and manually remove annoying emails without losing important ones.
Method 3: Unhiding the Trash Folder
Are you having issues restoring emails because you can’t find the ‘Trash’ folder? In some cases, your trash folder may be hidden from view, and the best option is to unhide it so that you can retrieve deleted emails.
Step 1: Go to ‘Settings’
In Gmail, navigate to your settings by clicking on the gear icon and selecting ‘See All Settings.’
Step 2: Navigate to ‘Labels’
Click on the ‘Labels’ tab. Here, you can see all the labels shown in your left-hand menu and any that aren’t. Look for the trash folder in this list.
Step 3: Unhide the Trash Folder
Change the setting for the trash folder to ‘Show’ to make it visible in your left menu. Now, you can follow the steps in method one for recovering emails from the trash.
Method 4: Check the Gmail Server
The first three methods we shared will work if you deleted the email less than 30 days ago and while it’s still stored in the trash. However, things become more difficult if you’ve deleted the email longer than that and it’s already been removed from the trash. You can try the following two methods to help recover emails that have been permanently deleted.
This method is only available to GSuite or paid Gmail users. If you use a free Gmail account, then try the next method instead.
Step 1: Sign in to Your Admin Console for Google
In order to recover your deleted emails from the server, you need to sign in to your Google Admin Console.
Step 2: Navigate to ‘Users’
Now, go to ‘Menu’ and click on ‘Directory.’ Finally, you need to click on ‘Users’ to find the account you want to restore from the server.
Step 3: Restore Data
Once you’ve found the user, click on ‘More Option’ listed next to the user’s account and then select ‘Restore Data.’ You’ll be asked to input a period that you want to restore, i.e., last 60 days, 90 days, etc. You also need to specify the type of data you want to restore. Once you’ve added this information, click on ‘Restore.’
Method 5: Ask for Help From Support
Finally, if nothing else works and your email is permanently deleted, your last option is to ask the Gmail support team for assistance. Sometimes, they’re able to help retrieve emails that have been permanently deleted.
Step 1: Sign in to Gmail
First, you need to sign in to your Gmail account using your email address and password. This should be the same account where you deleted the email from that you’re trying to retrieve.
Step 2: Use Gmail Message Recovery Tool
While you’re logged in to your account, use this Gmail Message Recovery Tool.
Can You Recover Permanently Deleted Files With Recovery Software?
If you’ve accidentally deleted an important email and are struggling to retrieve it, you may be considering using recovery software. However, software recovery tools won’t be able to retrieve permanently deleted files from Gmail.
The biggest reason why this isn’t possible is because emails aren’t files. They also aren’t stored on your device but rather in an email database. Software recovery tools look for files on your device, and you’ve given them access to this data. Because emails are stored in a database that these tools can’t access, they cannot retrieve permanently deleted emails.
The best tool to use if you need to recover deleted emails from Gmail is the native message recovery tool.
Final Thoughts
As you can see from our article, it’s easy to find deleted emails on Gmail if they’ve been deleted less than 30 days ago. However, if you need to recover permanently deleted messages, you’ll need to use the Gmail message recovery tool or contact Gmail support for assistance.
If you need more ways to manage your emails, try the Free Email Tracker for Gmail by PandaDoc. This extension works directly in Gmail and shows when someone’s opened your emails and how many times they’ve viewed it.
