Going through your Gmail account for that one email you need, but can’t find it? We archive and delete emails on accident, so it’s possible that that important email is in the trash can somewhere. But, how do you recover it? It might seem easy — just go into your email account’s “Trash” category, and then restore it to your Inbox, right?
Sometimes it’s that easy, but other times, it isn’t. If you follow along with us below, we’ll show you all of the ways on how you can recover deleted emails from Gmail. Let’s dive right in.
In Gmail
If you simply accidentally deleted an email out of the Inbox, you can easily recover it. Head on over to gmail.com in your browser, and log into your Google account with your Google credentials.
Next, on the left navigation pane, click on the category that says Trash. Select the email that you want to restore by checking the box to the left of the email, and then press the button that says move to Inbox.
You can do a similar operation in the Gmail app. Just press the Trash category within the app — you may need to open the Hamburger menu at the top first. Then, select the email that you want to restore, and press the Move To button.
How to recover permanently deleted emails
Sometimes we go into our Trash category and permanently delete all of the emails. Other times, they’re automatically deleted after 30 days. That makes it hard to recover, but even though they’re “permanently deleted”, they’re actually still recoverable! You can actually pull those emails from Google’s server, which is a huge life saver for those important emails that seem to have up and disappeared. On top of that, it’s not too difficult either — anyone can recover those emails!
It’s worth noting that Google doesn’t have a system for you to do it yourself — you’ll actually have to have a Google employee help you get those emails back. Here are the steps to do so:
- Log into your Google account.
- Next, you’ll want to go to Google’s Missing Emails page.
- You’ll need to fill out the contact form with supporting information, and confirm that the email account you’re trying to recover emails from is the right one. You’ll have to:
- Confirm your email.
- Enter the date you discovered them missing.
- Write any information down that will help the Google Support team. For example, if you lost the emails accidentally, make sure to mention this.
- Submit.
Google Support is usually really timely, but the next step is waiting for a response. This can take as little as 30 minutes, or as long as 24 hours. They’ll either send you an email saying that they were able to recover them, or you’ll get an email with the subject “Unable To Recover” that will tell you — obviously — that Google was unable to recover those emails.
After that, there’s really no way of getting them back; however, Google in most cases is able to recover lost emails.
Prevent lost emails in the future
One of the things that you’ll always hear people in the technology realm talking about is backups. Backups are so important in all use cases, whether it pertains to files, photo libraries, videos, important documents, and even emails. Unfortunately, you cannot use the usual system for backing up emails — you have to use something that specifically works with email.
Luckily, there are plenty of affordable options on the market, allowing you to keep your important emails backed up for just a couple of dollars per month. That’s some peace of mind that is well worth the cost!
Spinbackup
Spinbackup is one of our favorite ways to backup emails because of this reason: as long as you’re using under 4GB, you can use their Cloud service for free, for individual use. The nice thing about 4GB? It can house thousands of emails at a time, so in theory, you’ll never have to pay for Spinbackup.
However, they do offer plans for both individual use and for business use, with the latter being designed for G Suite — or Google Apps for Work — specifically. You’ll never lose an email again. For personal plans, you can actually subscribe for $4 per month for up to 50GB worth of storage. Any additional overages is just $0.03 per GB used. Their business plans start at $3 per user, with a minimum of 5 users required.
Upsafe
Upsafe is another excellent choice. They actually offer free Gmail backups with up to 3GB of data. On top of that, they have some sweet features in place that allow you to quickly and easily restore your emails in just a couple clicks. Additionally, Upsafe allows you to access and see your data / emails from anywhere in the world.
Just like Spinbackup, Upsafe has a handful of different features for business owners, too. They’re a little more expensive than Spinbackup, but have some great service in place, backing up your entire Google account for up to $24 per year, per user. However, it’s really nice because they use Amazon S3 for their Cloud storage, which keeps your data extremely secure and accessible.
Create categories
If you accidentally delete emails in your Google account a lot, you could also create new categories for emails. Label those important emails with those categories, and then you’ll never lose an email again. They’ll be safe in that new folder. For additional recognition of important emails, you can always “star” them or mark them as “important” to keep right in front of you.
Verdict
As you can see, it’s actually pretty easy to recover lost emails, even if you “accidentally” permanently deleted them. A quick email to the Google Mail support team can usually get them back in your Inbox in a jiffy. There are certainly times where Google can’t restore emails, which is just a lesson in needing to better categorize or keep a backup system in place for some of your most important emails.
Did you get lost somewhere? Leave us a comment below, and we’ll try and help you get things up and running.