Can’t Find that Email? Sort Through the Trash.

We’ve been seeing a lot of calls to the Help Desk recently from people who have “lost” email messages in Gmail.

Turns out the messages have been deleted and are in the Trash. How did they get to the Trash?  Not on their own.

Some people are double- or triple-clicking messages in Gmail to open them. You only need to click once on a message to open it; more than one click can easily cause you to click another button after the message opens.

Depending on the location of your mouse cursor, that means you could easily click the Delete, Archive, or Report Spam buttons when your message is opened. The mouse action happens so quickly that it appears as though your message “disappears.”

If you’re searching for an email message that might be in your Trash (or your Spam folder), type in:anywhere before your query in the search box at the top of Gmail. This will search your entire account for the message you’re looking for.

By default, Gmail will search everything but Trash and Spam for messages unless you tell it to look everywhere (or in:anywhere).

Read more about efficient searching in Gmail with Advanced Search Operators, and take a look at our video for “Working with Labels, Filters and Advanced Search Operators.”