How do I recover permanently deleted emails? – [Answer] 2022

Answer

1. Select the email(s) that you would like to restore 
2. And click “OK” or “Select all” to select all emails
3. Then click “OK” to restore them.4.This will restore the email to the Deleted Items folder where you can move it to a different folder.

Recover Permanently Deleted Emails from Gmail

I had my email account set up on Thunderbird. I accidentally deleted a lot of emails, including some important ones. How do I recover them? Do I have to use the web client like Gmail?

– Concerned [via Email]

Hi Concerned! Doesn’t it seem strange not being able to find those emails you sent in your inbox anymore when before they were there just fine? In fact, a lot of people are asking about how to recover their permanently deleted emails after they’ve been removed from the Trash folder and moved into the Deleted Items folder. But don’t panic; you do have options for getting your mail back so that you can keep using your account as usual. Let me tell you more….

Do I have to recover deleted emails from the Trash folder?

Fortunately, when you delete messages from Thunderbird by deleting them (or emptying the Deleted Items folder), they’re only marked for deletion — they aren’t actually purged immediately. This means that there’s an opportunity to undelete your email messages if you act fairly quickly. So don’t move any more mail into the trash, and let’s take a look at what happens after you permanently remove something.

When I delete mail in Thunderbird, how long does it stay in my account?

When you permanently remove an email message from your inbox using one of these methods, the message itself is not removed; instead, it’s moved into the Deleted Items folder, where it remains until you empty that folder. However, Thunderbird keeps a copy of your message in its Local Storage for up to 30 days (by default). After those 30 days are up, the messages aren’t immediately deleted, but they are considered expired and can be overwritten by any new emails arriving at your account.

When you configure Thunderbird to use its local storage area for email messages, it creates a subfolder named “Deleted Messages” within Local Folders. That’s exactly where all of your permanently deleted mail is stored — if you haven’t emptied your Deleted Items folder before after 30 days or longer have passed since deleting them. When the older messages do expire and get automatically overwritten, there’s no way to recover them.

There is a lot of confusion and some controversy over whether deleting messages immediately instead of waiting for Thunderbird’s default retention period (30 days) is better or worse. On the one hand, doing so allows you to free up space on your email server and prevents mail from being unnecessarily retained even after you’ve read it or had time to digest it. On the other hand, some folks are quite particular about keeping their inboxes as tidy as possible by permanently removing everything they may not need anymore — especially if they’re uncertain about whether they’ll ever need those old messages again in the future. Finally, the Secure Empty Trash option simply deletes your deleted items without actually emptying the Deleted Items folder, and as such doesn’t necessarily free up any space at all.

What if I accidentally deleted an email that I really need?

If you’ve made a mistake and permanently removed something important from your inbox by accident, it’s not too late to undo your action — as long as Local Storage is enabled for Thunderbird and your messages haven’t expired yet. Fortunately, the Deleted Messages subfolder is stored in plain text format within your profile; so you should be able to open its .msf file with any text editor to view its contents without having to load Thunderbird itself first. The only required change you’ll have to make is the insertion of another header line within each message before viewing them:

Recover permanently deleted Emails from Gmail

Just replace the placeholder information [“message”] in each header line with the actual message headers for each message you want to retrieve. Then save and repackage the .msf file with a new name, and finally delete all of your old messages via the Deleted Messages folder’s contextual menu if desired (though this may have some backwards compatibility implications). When you restart Thunderbird or log back into it again, those previously deleted messages should reappear in your usual inbox just as they were before — though nothing guarantees that any of these steps will work as you expect!

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This article was published by the one and only Dave Taylor, better known as Ask Dave Taylor . If you have a technology question you want answered, email him at [email protected] . You can also see what he’s up to over at his website www.askdavetaylorontech.com !

How does Google’s spam filter work?

Google won’t answer those questions. But it should. All data stored on someone else’s servers is subject to that entity’s rules and regulations, which means there are going to be times when you run up against a wall — especially if your queries concern issues related to personal privacy or legal matters. And if history is any judge, this is going to happen more often as we collectively cede more and more of our private communications and information over to third parties for storage.