Important Gmail email disappeared without a trace — recovery tips

One of the best ways to communicate formally is through email. Every day people receive many emails from work, banks and shops. However, sometimes, the most important ones can be lost.

Technology Personalized writes about how to recover lost email in Gmail quickly.

Check Your Spam

Most emails that end up in Spam are from unreliable sources that Gmail recognises as unwanted. Google may block emails that contain a suspicious subject line or content, a malicious attachment, are marked as spam by other users, or come from domains that don't have proper security settings.

To get to your Junk folder, click the hamburger menu (three dashes) next to the Gmail logo, scroll down and click More, and then go to Spam, where your lost email may be stored.

Search for Emails

If you remember the content of a message or the sender's email address, you can find it in the search bar. It will display messages in all your mail folders.

It is recommended to use the filters "Has the words", "Doesn't have", "Size", etc.

Check the Trash Folder

The Trash Folder contains all emails that have been deleted within the last 30 days.

If you accidentally deleted an email you need, you can find it there. It is important to find it before it is automatically deleted.

To get to the Trash Folder, click the hamburger menu and find it in the side menu or type "in:trash" in the search bar.

Check All Mail

Similar to the Trash and Spam folders, you can see the All Mail folder in the left pane of Gmail.

You can use the filters "From", "Has attachment", "Any time", etc., to simplify your search.

Check Your Gmail Storage

Gmail storage is not unlimited, and when it gets full, you'll stop receiving new messages, and you and the sender will be notified.

Make sure you don't miss this notification and that you have enough storage space to receive new messages.

Check for Filters and Blocked Addresses

Gmail allows users to filter and block certain email addresses so that they don't end up in the Inbox folder, but instead go straight to the Archive folder.

Check to see if you have any filters set up by going to Gmail settings from the gear icon in the top right corner of the service.

Check Forwarding Options

If you have POP and IMAP forwarding set up in your Gmail settings, or if you choose to delete forwarded emails, you may have lost them.

You need to check your forwarding settings to see if they have been forwarded to another address. If so, you need to access this address and find the emails you need.

Use the Gmail Recovery Tool

If none of these methods work, the only option left is to use the Gmail Recovery Tool. It helps you recover emails that were permanently deleted within the last 30 days.

On the Recovery Tool page, log in to your Gmail and let the tool scan for all deleted emails.

As a reminder, Gmail users have a new useful feature based on Gemini AI. Now, you can add events from emails to your Google Calendar.

We also wrote that Google plans to update Gmail security rules for all users. The company is preparing to abandon SMS messages to confirm email logins.