There are instances that you find Gmail faulty. One of these instances is when you found out that your emails are missing from your Inbox folder, from your Trash, and from your other email folders in your Gmail account.
This is basically NOT an issue with Gmail. The emails can go missing in various possible reasons. Among the reasons are the following:
- A configuration issue with IMAP or POP access.
- Settings applied to incoming mail, such as a filter or forwarding
- Deliberate or accidental human action, or possibly a compromised account
A configuration issue with IMAP or POP access
With Gmail, even though it is a FREE email service, you can access your emails using POP and IMAP clients. This is UNLIKE other free email service like Yahoo Mail which does NOT provide access to emails using POP and IMAP clients. Therefore, when you have a free Yahoo Mail account, you cannot use an email program like MS Outlook 2007/2010, Windows Live Mail or Thunderbird and other email programs to access your free Yahoo Mail account. You are only allowed to when you pay for the Yahoo Mail Plus – the paid version of Yahoo Mail. Not with Gmail. You can use these email programs even when your Gmail account is a free account.
When you use these email programs to access your Gmail, they can be configured to use POP or IMAP. When it uses POP, the default option or settings of most email programs is to “Delete” emails from Gmail when they access and download new emails. Unless you configure them to “Leave emails on the server (Gmail)”, then that is the only time that your emails will not be missing when you access your Gmail using the web browser. Thus, one reason why your emails are missing when you access your Gmail using a web browser is when you are using a POP/IMAP email programs to access your Gmail.
Settings applied to incoming mail, such as a filter or forwarding
Another reason why your emails could be missing is when you apply filters or forwarding. When you apply a filter, there is an option to Delete the filtered emails without being delivered to your Inbox. This is good if you want to intentionally get rid of annoying emails from someone. They will not know that you are not receiving their emails since your filter is set to delete them before downloading them to your Inbox.
Filters can also move emails automatically to your labels or email folders. Thus, when a filter is applied, the emails could be missing but they were just moved to other folders. Please do a search.
Forwarding is also one reason why your emails are missing. There is a forwarding option where emails are forwarded to another email address and the original email message is deleted from Gmail. This is a common scenario for hacked accounts where the owner of the Gmail account might complain about why he or she is no longer receiving any emails. It is very sad to find out that the hacker added a forwarding rule which forwards ALL emails to the hacker’s email address and deleting them from the Gmail account. So when you access your Gmail, it appears that you are not getting any.
Deliberate or accidental human action, or possibly a compromised account
Email can also gone missing when you delete those email “forever”. Or alternately, if you delete the emails, and you empty the trash.
How to recover missing emails?
Unfortunately, there is no way to recover missing emails using the Gmail interface. The only way to recover them is trough the intervention of the Gmail people. This is done by submitting the recovery form. To recover your missing emails, please click on this link or the button below:
https://support.google.com/mail/contact/bugs?ctx=bugflow_receive31&rd=1
