How to Recover Deleted Emails from Gmail for Business

Article at a glance

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

With over  6 million business users, Gmail has grown to become Google’s most successful product yet and one of the most popular email clients globally.   

Step 1:  Log in to Gmail 

Step 2: On the left- hand panel, click More Trash.  

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.

Limitations of restoring deleted Gmail emails from Trash

After 30 days, an individual user cannot recover those deleted emails, but an administrator can restore the emails from the Google Admin Console. Following are the steps to recover Gmail emails from Admin Console:

Step 1: Log in to the Admin console and navigate to Menu and then Directory and then Users.

Step 2: Hover over the username and click on More options and then Restore data.

Step 3: Select the date range from within the last 25 days and choose the “Gmail” option on the application drop-down menu to restore emails within that period.

Limitations of restoring Gmail emails using Google Admin Console:

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.

Limitations of restoring Gmail emails using Outlook Auto-Archive feature:

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.

Limitations of using Google Takeout to recover deleted Gmail emails:

Visit Google Vault and sign in using your Google Workspace account.

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 recover permanently deleted emails from using Google Vault

Step 1: Log in to Google Vault using your admin credentials. Click on the “Matters” pane.

Step 2: Create a new matter and name it. (A description is optional). Click on “Create.”

Step 3: Click on the “Search” module on the left pane → Choose “Drive” as the type of application and provide the email address of the user who has lost the file.

 Step 4: Click on the “Search” button to list all the files with the specified search conditions.

Step 5: Click on the “Export” option to export all the files.

Step 6: Click on “Download” after completing the export process.

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

Limitations of Google Vault: Google Vault is a retention solution that is intended to preserve critical business data for legal and litigation purposes. It does not qualify as a backup solution as data can only be exported, and not easily restored to the Google account. Moreover, it does not include capabilities such as single-click restore, automated backup, cross-user email restore, etc., that are essential in a cloud backup tool.

To know how to back up Gmail emails using SysCloud, read this article.

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?