If you’ve deleted an email and need it back, don’t panic! There are two ways to recover your emails. The first way is easy but may take some time; the second option will be faster in most cases – though not always as reliable or perfect when they do fail (which happens).
First off: if all of my messages were sent using an account address like “contact@gmail,” then I would start by checking with Google’s Trash folder, which can sometimes hold unread copies of deleted items from our past conversations even after we think they’re gone forever because there might still exist multiple versions saved on someone else’s computer who had access at one point before deleting their copy. If it’s not there, we can try the next – and faster – approach: using a special page on Google Data Takeout to download your entire account archive of emails (or even just the last seven days worth). Once you complete that step, then I would look into downloading each mail as a backup for safekeeping at my Google Takeout Data page.
If you wish to save multiple Google accounts, just repeat the above steps using each account’s username and password. The date range of “Last 7 days” or “All time” is not available for this option, so if you need less than the full 30 days worth of your data at once, use the previous method instead. This can be an alternative to downloading your Gmail messages within Gmail itself as a backup. It should be faster because there’s no wait time after clicking on each item in order to download it, but it does rely on your internet browser’s cache alone rather than a local backup file. Your archived copy will also only include what was available online on the date you choose. Note: If you use this method and click on an item in your inbox for any reason while still logged into your account, it will download that one message onto your computer and delete it from your Gmail inbox (or the other way around).
- Right-click on the browser icon below according to whether you’re using Firefox or Chrome/Chromium.
- Copy its URL address (i.e., ” https://mail.google.com/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=https://mail.google.com/mail/?extsrc=mbox&url=%5BURL HERE%5D “). Note: If you’re using Gmail via your browser’s built-in mailto: handler, you need to right-click somewhere on the page and then find the “mailto:” text in the resulting shortcut menu and copy its URL from there.
- Paste that into a new tab/window of your browser or into a new email message, depending on which method you’re using below.
How to Retrieve Deleted Emails In Different Browsers
Chrome/Chromium:
If you have used Chrome/Chromium’s “mailto” ability before to send emails with attached images, etc., it might ask you whether you want to use Gmail as an intermediary for this email because it thinks the current webpage is generating an email message itself. If so, click “No. Use mail.google.com for this link.”
Firefox:
– Tools – Email This – or Ctrl+Shift+K should bring up the email dialog you’re used to from Firefox’s regular email UI.- Replace “[email protected]” with your Gmail username, then click Continue, then replace “yourpassword” with your Gmail password and click OK.- Now just write an appropriate subject line and message body in the resulting window, attach any images/etc., and send it off!
Microsoft Outlook 2007:
– Tools – Send To – Mail Recipient… brings up a list of applications that can handle various document types via this method; select Gmail again here.- Enter your account info (use another Gmail address if necessary) and attach the images.- You can also click on From at the top to sign out of your Gmail address, insert one of your Outlook contacts’ addresses, and send it as them.
– Tools – Options – Advanced… – “When replying to or forwarding a message:” has two options for Gmail specifically: Reply using only free/busy information (this may not work), or Reply using my previous message as a model. If you select this option, the first couple of paragraphs are used as the email contents instead of newly composed text.
– Also under general options, look for an Open messages in section if they arrive from contacts you specify. Leave this checked so new emails will be properly categorized by sender’s name in your inbox!
