Suddenly Vanishing Gmail Messages—4 Things Google Says You Must Do

For most people, “inbox zero” is an unachievable email goal, but imagine waking up to find your Gmail inbox empty. I’m not talking about no more unread emails, but rather nothing at all: your emails have suddenly vanished. That happened to one user who has taken to the Gmail support forums to report that “all of my emails in my inbox are missing.” The user explained that they were “nervous it was a cyber attack of some sort” to blame. Thankfully, there are several reasons why this can occur, and they are not all hacking-related. Here’s how Google can help you get your email back if something similar has happened to your Gmail messages.

My Gmails Are Missing, Please Help

In a plea for help posted to Google’s Gmail support forum Sept. 28, one user explained how they had checked their inbox only to discover that all of their emails were missing. The emails were not in the trash, they hadn’t all been moved to spam, archived or sent to a different folder. They had simply vanished. “My other Gmails have not been impacted,” the user said, “I am receiving messages as of a few minutes ago but no history in my inbox?” Obviously, the first things to cross their mind were either a bug of some sort, or that they had been hacked. The latter seemed less likely as they stated they had enabled two-factor authentication for the account; however, the fact that a supplier they used was experiencing a network disruption and had been offline for some days added to the concerns. So, what could be happening?

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As a diamond product expert responded in the forum thread, Google doesn’t delete Gmail messages from active accounts. At least not unless they have been sent to the trash or your spam folder, which the user had already stated was not the case. The 30-day permanent Gmail message deletion rule only applies to the trash folder, Google has said. As for unused accounts, they need to have been left untouched for two years before getting zapped. Among the most likely suspects for messages going missing, the helpful expert said, were forwarding or filter rules, authorized third-party apps and, of course, account compromise. Hackers do, indeed, sometimes delete messages so as to cover their tracks with regard to security warnings from Google informing the owner their account had been accessed from an unrecognized device, for example.

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The 4 Things Google Says You Must Do If Gmail Messages Have Suddenly Vanished

Google recommends that you try the following four steps if you have experienced missing email messages. Try them on your computer rather than through the Gmail app, though, as some are impossible otherwise.

1. Check to see if the emails in question have been archived, deleted or marked as spam. If you know any information about the missing email, such as subject or even content, you can search through all your Gmail including for those messages not in your inbox. You can use “in:anywhere” as a search operator to look for the email everywhere.
2. Check to see if the emails have been filtered. You may have created a filter that is set to automatically archive or delete emails that match the configured criteria. At the top right of your Gmail window click on Settings|See All Settings|Filters And Blocked Addresses.
3. Check to see if your emails are being forwarded to another account. This is an often overlooked cause for unexpected missing messages, as it’s possible to configure Gmail to automatically archive or delete your emails after they have been forwarded. Click on Settings|See All Settings|Forwarding and POP/IMAP. Google warns that if emails are being forwarded to an unrecognized address, your account may have been compromised. You should immediately disable the forwarding rule and then take a Google account security check-up for the next steps.
4. Finally, because such things can easily be overlooked, if you read your Gmail through a different email client, check your settings there to see if you have configured the app to delete messages from the Gmail server once delivered to the client you use. This is pretty much a repeat of the last check, but it’s worth bearing in mind anyway.