How to Retrieve Deleted Emails in Gmail on Android

Gmail provides its users with a variety of features, including lots of storage space, spam filtering, security, and interaction with other Google products. However, sometimes you may accidentally delete an important email from your Gmail account, or you may want to recover an email that you deleted earlier.

What happens when you delete an email in Gmail?

In Gmail, deleting an email does not automatically remove it from your account. Rather, email gets transferred to the Trash folder and is kept for a month before being getting deleted. This means that you have a chance to recover the deleted email within this time, as long as it is still in the Trash folder.

However, if you empty the Trash folder manually, or if the 30 days have passed, then the deleted email will be gone forever. There is no way to recover it from Gmail after that, unless you have a backup of your emails on your computer or another device.

How to Retrieve Deleted Emails in Gmail on Android

The steps below can be used to retrieve a deleted email from your Android device’s Gmail Trash folder:

Step 1:  On your Android smartphone, launch the Gmail app, and then tap the hamburger menu symbol in the upper-left corner of the screen:

Step 2: Choose Trash (your language settings may potentially call it Bin or something else) and track down the email you want to retrieve. You can use the search bar at the top of the screen to look for it, using keywords or phrases from the email:

Step 3: Long-press on the email that you want to recover. The icon on the left side of the email will be replaced by a checkmark and on the top right corner of the screen, tap the kebab menu icon:

Step 4: Now choose Move to and from there select the folder where you want to move the email, for instance if you want to move it to primary then just tap on Primary:

The email will be moved out of the Trash folder and restored to your chosen location.

Conclusion

Deleting an email in Gmail does not mean that it is gone forever, however you can still recover it from the Trash folder within 30 days, using your Android device or a web browser. However, if you empty the Trash folder or wait longer than 30 days, then the deleted email will be permanently erased from your account. To retrieve deleted emails, go to the Gmail trash folder and move the respective emails to the desired folder.