How do I restore e-mails that were sent to my trash folder and deleted? They are important e-mails.

Web-Based or Computer Based Emails?

While it is possible to recover some deleted email messages, even if the Trash folder has been emptied, the first task is to identify whether the email is stored in a Web-based account such as Yahoo Mail or Gmail or locally on your personal computer. If you use an email client such as Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, or Windows Live Mail to download the messages to your computer, you have far more email recovery options than if you simply access your Web-based email messages online.   

Recovering Web-Based Emails

For cases when a message has not yet been emptied out of the Trash folder, recovery is a simple matter of opening the Trash folder, finding the message, and moving it back to the Inbox.

Unfortunately, if you are using a Web-based email account such as Yahoo Mail or Gmail and the Trash folder has been emptied, then the message is gone for good. According to Yahoo Mail's help files, "When messages are emptied from the trash folder, they are permanently deleted from the Yahoo! Mail server and cannot be recovered."

Similarly, Google has this to say about recovering trashed email messages, "If you've deleted a message permanently, by clicking Delete Forever in your Spam or Trash, it isn't possible to recover the message."

Recovering Computer Based Email Messages

If you are using an email client that downloads emails to your computer, email recovery may be possible. Like Web-based emails, if the messages are in the Trash or Deleted Items folder, recovery is a matter of dragging and dropping the messages back into the Inbox. However, this isn't the case so you will need to invest in a software product designed for recovering email messages in order to recover your emails.

Before you run out and buy a data recovery program, it's important to understand how data recovery works. When a file or email message is deleted and then "permanently deleted" by emptying the Recycle Bin or Trash folder, it's not instantly deleted. In fact, the file or message remains intact until a new file is created and occupies the original space on the hard drive. You can no longer view the deleted file because Windows has hidden it and marked the location as "free space." Until new files overwrite the data, deleted files and messages can be recovered with data recovery tools.

Email data recovery is slightly more complex than standard data recovery because email clients like Outlook store email messages in "PST" files. Standard data recovery programs may not be compatible with your email client, so make sure to select a data recovery program that is designed for your email client.

For example, we often recommend ParetoLogic's Data Recovery Pro version because it can recover Outlook and Outlook Express messages. In fact, the demo version will even show you if the emails are recoverable or not. You can download the Data Recovery Pro scanner before you buy the full featured version and find out if the messages are recoverable or not.

Celeste Stewart | January 22nd, 2010
Tags: email recovery, recover email, restore deleted email
Categories: Data Recovery

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