How to Recover Gmail Trash

Google launched Gmail as a public email platform in 2004. Right from its launch, Gmail has become more and more popular, and it is so popular today that almost everyone who has an email has a Gmail account. As of 2019, there are more than 1.5 billion active Gmail users around the world. Though there are several alternatives to Gmail like Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, and Inbox.com, Google still dominates the email industry. During its launch in 2004, Gmail offered around 1 GB of storage space per user. At that time, it was a very great space compared to the other service providers. However, after a while, Gmail increased its free storage space of 15 GB for every user! Each email can contain text, links, emojis, attachments, and even signatures. Your emails can be up to 25 MB large. But, you can receive emails up to 50 MB in size.

Though Gmail’s storage space is extensively large, we sometimes clear our inbox for a lot of reasons. Often, we receive a lot of unwanted emails – including promotions, notifications, spam, and a lot more. While doing this, we may accidentally delete an important email by mistake. Or else, we may delete an email, change our mind somehow, and want the email back. In order to cope up with such issues, Gmail provides a feature called ‘Trash‘.

What is Gmail Trash?

When you delete an email from Gmail (either from your inbox or any other tab that you have created), it goes to the Trash folder. The trash acts as a temporary storage space for your deleted emails. These deleted emails stay in the trash folders for around 30 days. During this period, you can recover your emails any time you want. After the 30-day period, your email gets permanently deleted, and you cannot get them back. Gmail automatically deletes your emails after 30 days. However, you can also manually clear the trash. If you again accidentally delete your trash and want to get back your deleted email, then here are a few methods to do so. Keep reading to find the perfect solution to solve your problem –

Method 1 – Recover Gmail Trash Using the Undo Button

For every delete you perform, Gmail provides an Undo option. As soon as you delete an email, either from your inbox or from your trash, a pop-up box appears. This pop-up box contains an Undo option. Click on it immediately, and you will get back your email immediately. However, you need to be really fast as the pop-up box will be there only for 10 seconds. After 10 seconds, the pop-up disappears, and you cannot use this method after that. So if it is a little longer than that, you should keep reading the other methods listed below to get back your email.

Method 2 – Recovering Trash from Other Devices

Google provides two options to access Gmail – through the web browser or the official mobile application. So, if you are accessing Gmail through your PC (or your web browser on any other device), there is a way to recover your email from any other device that you have logged in to. All you have to do is, as soon as you delete your trash email from your web browser, immediately switch off the internet connection on your other Gmail-enabled device. Now open the Gmail application on that device. As there is no internet connection, the application will fetch the latest cached version of your account. If it has not synced after you deleted your email (from trash), then your trash email will still be present. Restore it immediately to your inbox.

However, if you are trying this method after a long time since you deleted your email, or if your app has synced after deleting your trash, or if you cannot find your email on other devices for any other reason, then this method cannot be used. You need to try out other methods. Keep reading to try more methods.

Method 3 – Using Google Message Recovery Tool

In order to cope up with millions of human errors that happen every day, Google has a dedicated Message Recovery Tool. Using this tool, you can get back emails that are not yet deleted from Google’s server. You can make use of it as follows –

1. First of all, check whether you are logged in to your Google account. If not, log in to your account.
2. Go to the official Gmail Message Recovery Tool from your web browser.
3. The tool asks you to confirm whether you want to start the process. Click on Continue to start scanning.
4. After this, Google Message Recovery Tool will take some time to search for your messages in the server.
5. A list of all the messages that remain in its server (recoverable) are displayed here. Click on the message that you want to get back and then click on Restore.

That’s it. You have recovered your deleted messages from your trash folder. However, if it has been more than 30 days or due to some other reason, Gmail may have permanently deleted your email. Under such conditions, you will get the following message from Gmail, “Unfortunately, your missing emails were permanently deleted, and we can’t get them back.” If you get this message, then Google has already deleted your email from its server. Keep trying the next method to try recovering your email –

Method 4 – Contacting Gmail Support

If the method mentioned above does not work for you, it means that Google has deleted your email permanently from its server. There is almost not a little possibility to get your email back. However, there may be one solution – Contacting Google itself to help you get back your email. Contacting the Google help center and explaining your problem may sometimes help you to bring back your email. For this, go to the website of the official Gmail Help. Once you are in there, you will find a lot of support articles for common user problems. Search for the article that you are looking for there, and follow the instructions that are given below. If you cannot find any article that is related to your issue, there is also another option to contact the support team directly. This is how you can do it –

1. Go to the Community tab of the Gmail Support Page.
2. Start typing in your issue in the search box given there.
3. A list of all the community discussion articles related to your topic will appear.
4. Find the suitable topic related to your topic and follow the instructions.
5. If you cannot find the perfect article, then keep scrolling down.
6. There is an option called, “Not what you’re looking for? Try asking the Help Community”. Select Ask Now –> on the right corner.
7. A form will appear now. You need to fill out this form.
8. Enter the title of your problem in the first box. Then click on Continue.
9. If any of the suggested articles matches your problem, click on it and read it out. Else, scroll down and fill in all the requested details.
10. Again click on Continue.
11. Now describe your problem in detail in the next text box.
12. Now, post your query finally.

You have submitted your query to Google successfully. If Google finds your request to be genuine, a member of the Gmail Support Team will contact you shortly. However, it may take a little time, and you need to be patient. Keep checking your email for any possible update regarding your query.