How to Recover Deleted Emails from Gmail for Business (With screenshots)

Article at a glance

• Emails deleted within the last 30 days can be recovered from the Trash or "Deleted Items" folder.

Being the second most popular email client, people who use Gmail often find themselves needing to recover deleted emails and restore deleted Gmail accounts.

 Watch our YouTube video -Three Simple Ways to Recover your Deleted Gmail Emails,

I. How to recover deleted emails from Trash folder?

Step 1:  Log in to Gmail

Step 2: Navigate to the “Trash” on the left-hand side panel to find all the deleted emails.

Step 3: Scroll through the list of deleted emails, select the required email(s) by clicking on the checkbox next to it and click on the “move to” option.

Step 4: Select the required label and the email will be restored to the selected folder.

II. How to recover deleted Gmail emails from the Trash folder in a desktop client

Step 1: Launch the desktop IMAP email client.

Step 2:  Click on the “Deleted Items” folder on the left side pane of the screen.

Step 3: Scroll through the list of deleted emails, select the required email(s) by right-clicking on the mail and click on the “move to” option.

Step 4:  Select the required label and the email will be moved.

After 30 days, an individual user cannot recover those deleted emails, but an administrator has the provision to restore the emails from the Google Admin Console.

Recover deleted emails from the Gmail web application

Step 1: Log in to the Admin console and navigate to the “Users” section.

Step 2: Click next to the name of a user account and select the “Restore Data” option.

Step 3: Select the date range and choose the “Gmail” option on the application drop-down menu to restore emails within that period.

Step 1: If you have already set an auto-archive policy for your emails in the Outlook desktop client, you can find the “Archive” label on the left-hand side pane. 

Step 2: Click on the label, select the required email(s), right-click on the email, select the “Move to” option, and select the label for restore. 

Step 3: The emails will be restored under the specified label.

One of the lesser-known, but an important application in the Google Workspace is Google Takeout. 

Step 1: Install Thunderbird desktop client using this link and launch the application.

Step 2: On the page, type in the email account to which you want to restore the data, select the IMAP radio button, and click on the “Done” button.

Step 3: Click on the menu and select the “Add-ons and Themes” option.

Step 4: In the next pop-up window, click on “Find more add-ons” at the bottom of the page.

Step 5: Type in “ImportExport tool” in the search tab on the next screen and click on “+ Add to -Thunderbird” option to install the ImportExportTools add-on.

Step 6: Click on the “Restart Now” button to install the add-on.

Step 1: Launch Thunderbird after the restart.

Step 2: Right-click “Export Local folders” in the left panel and select “ImportExportTools” → “Import MBOX file.”

Step 3: Click on “Import MBOX file,” choose the first radio button “Import directly one or more MBOX files” and click on “OK” to select your MBOX file from the destination.

Step 4: The selected file(s) will be directly added to the Thunderbird local folder.

Step 5: Select the imported emails.

Step 6: Right-click on the selected emails and click on the “Move to” option.

Step 7: Select your destination email address and select “inbox” or any other label.

If you are using Google Workspace Business or Enterprise plans, you will have access to Google Vault to archive your data. 

Google Vault cannot be used to directly restore the backed-up Gmail data. Therefore, restoring is usually done with the help of third-party applications like the Google Workspace Migration Tool. Before restoration, the files have to be exported from the Google Vault using the following steps. 

How to search for emails in Google Vault?

Step 1: Click on the Matters module from the side pane.

Step 2: Click on the Matter title and select the “Search” module from the left pane.

Step 3: Type in any of the following to search: the required email address, its sent date, or any other key term and click on the “Search” button.

How to export and download emails from Google Vault?

Step 1: Click on the “Export” button

Step 2: Name the file to be exported, specify the desired file format, and click on the “Export” button.

Step 3: Once the export is complete, download the emails by clicking on the “Download” link in zip format only.

You can use the Google Workspace migration tool to restore the exported and downloaded emails using Google Vault to your email account.

Step 1: Launch the Google Workspace migration tool.

Step 2: Provide the email address to which you want to restore the emails.

Step 3: Google Workspace migration tool would then prompt for access to your email account.

Step 4: Once you provide access, if you had downloaded the emails in PST format, choose the option “From PST file(s)” from the drop-down menu.

Step 5: Choose the downloaded file from your desktop.

Step 6: Open the files and choose the type of data to be migrated.

Step 7: Select the “Email messages” checkbox and click on the “Migrate” button.

Step 8: Open the destination email account to view the migrated emails.

Individual Gmail users can easily restore deleted emails using Gmvault. Gmvault is an open-source command-line tool that easily backs up and restores Gmail emails. But, this is not a viable option for businesses and organizations that have to restore multiple user emails.

SysCloud is a third-party online cloud backup solution that uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) to offer a fully automated cloud for backup and restore of Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 data.

To know how to backup Gmail emails using SysCloud, click here.

Step 1: Launch the Gmvault tool.

Step 2: Enter the command, <the email id to which you want to restore> ; e.g: gmvault restore wbruce@testing-team.com.

Step 3: Press “enter”.

In case you want to learn how to back up your Gmail account, read our article,“How to Backup Gmail Emails for Your Business? (Step-By-Step Guide)“.

Q. Can Gmail emails be recovered after being deleted?

Q. How do I recover permanently deleted emails?

Q. How can you recover permanently deleted emails when you don’t have a backup?

Q. Is it better to have a third-party backup application in case of accidental deletion of emails from Gmail?

Yes. With third-party back applications like SysCloud, you can always recover and restore any lost data hassle-free. Because backup is automated, the chances of backup being not available for restore are eliminated. 

Q. Within how many days of deletion can we restore email from Trash and Google Admin Console?