A similar question was asked by a TechWelkin reader a few months ago. He had deleted emails from Gmail Inbox and then also emptied the Trash folder —thereby deleting all the trash content permanently. A number of people face this scenario. Also sometimes, it appears that, the emails simply go missing as the Gmail user does not intentionally delete them. You may feel at loss as to where your emails have gone. And of course the first thing that comes to your mind is that your Gmail account has been hacked! If you do not follow strict security advice, email accounts may get compromised, but if only some of your emails are missing, there is something you can do recover them. You can recover deleted emails from Gmail.
Recover Deleted Emails from Gmail
It appears that Google keeps trashed emails for some more time even after the Trash is cleared. Therefore, you can contact Google Mail support and request them to help you find missing emails. Google has provided an online form to receive such requests. Follow the steps given below:
Log into your Gmail account. Go to the missing emails support page. You will get a small form to submit. As you have already logged into your Gmail account, the form will automatically recognize that you want to recover deleted emails from that particular account. Mention the date when you first noticed that your emails have gone missing. Provide a brief description of the problem and steps to reproduce the problem. Here you just need to briefly explain what happened. For example, you deleted emails from inbox or your deleted the emails from Trash as well or you did not intentionally delete emails but somehow they have disappeared. Click Submit button
Soon (mostly within half an hour) you will get an email from [email protected]. The email will tell you whether Google was able to recover your emails or not. Please note that you should not reply to this email as it comes from an automated system. A reply will not be read by anyone. If Google is able to retrieve your emails, you will get an affirmative reply and the said emails will begin to show in your account. Check both the Inbox and Trash folders.
Can You Recover Permanently Deleted Emails?
It is not very clear how Google recovers and returns deleted emails to you. Different people have reported different things. Last month, immediately after submitting the request form, a friend got all the emails that she had deleted in last one year. A similar effort made by another friend bore no fruit and Google sent an unable to recover sort of reply. We believe that Google can return emails to you if you had not manually emptied the Trash folder. Emails older than 30 days get automatically deleted from the Gmail Trash folder. We think that Google can return these emails to you. But if you have manually emptied the Trash, you may get a negative reply. However, there is no harm in trying by sending a recovery request using the above mentioned form.
Your Experience?
Please let us know your experience with using this deleted emails recovery tool of Google. Your comment will help other readers who are distressed because of losing their important emails. We hope that this article was useful for you. Please feel free to ask if you have any questions in this regard. We will try our best to help you. Thank you for using TechWelkin!
