Disappearing emails

[billhansen]

Disappearing emails are a serious problem, and I can't figure out where they go, or how to retrieve them. I know this has been discussed on the forum in the past, but I'm still having a lot of trouble with it. This doesn't seem to occur during the primary email exchange, but when a thread is created, or when an email has been forwarded, the results seem to disappear.  The first Reply to me will show up - but if I "delete" that Reply (that is, if I put it in Trash) it's gone, apparently forever. The resulting emails are nowhere to be found - not in Spam, not in Trash, not in All Mail. Gmail Searches don't help. At first I thought I could make some sort of Filter or Rule which would prevent the disappearances, but either I don't know the magic words to use when creating the Filter (Rule), or maybe it's impossible. 

Bill Hansen

Ihaca NY USA

[Kenneth Ayers]

Would your issue be resolved if you simply archived emails rather than deleting them? Your missing emails issue still needs to be understood but I would suggest archiving them in any case, especially if that solves the problem

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[bill hansen]

I'll try it. I'll get some family members to start a couple of short threads with me, and I'll also Forward a couple of emails to them.   I'll be pleasantly surprised if it works. The emails I've mentioned (threads, forwarded emails) are never in All Mail, which is where Archived mail goes.

On Tue, Jul 18, 2017 at 12:56 PM, Kenneth Ayers <justk...@gmail.com> wrote:

Would your issue be resolved if you simply archived emails rather than deleting them? Your missing emails issue still needs to be understood but I would suggest archiving them in any case, especially if that solves the problem

On Tue, Jul 18, 2017, 8:59 AM billhansen <billhan...@gmail.com> wrote:

Disappearing emails are a serious problem, and I can't figure out where they go, or how to retrieve them. I know this has been discussed on the forum in the past, but I'm still having a lot of trouble with it. This doesn't seem to occur during the primary email exchange, but when a thread is created, or when an email has been forwarded, the results seem to disappear.  The first Reply to me will show up - but if I "delete" that Reply (that is, if I put it in Trash) it's gone, apparently forever. The resulting emails are nowhere to be found - not in Spam, not in Trash, not in All Mail. Gmail Searches don't help. At first I thought I could make some sort of Filter or Rule which would prevent the disappearances, but either I don't know the magic words to use when creating the Filter (Rule), or maybe it's impossible. 

Bill Hansen

Ihaca NY USA

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[Jeff Grossman]

Bill,

When you hit the delete button, it will delete the whole conversation, not just the message you are looking at.  To only delete a single message in a conversation you need to hit the arrow to the right of the Reply button on that message and there is an option to delete this message.

Jeff

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[Andy]

Bill, the vast majority of Gmail users do not have problems with disappearing emails.

I have to wonder what is different about your situation, or with your use of Gmail, that causes them to be emptied from the Trash, apparently without your knowledge.  I'm pretty sure there are no Gmail settings that would ever cause it to purge (empty) the Trash automatically.

Do you use a smartphone for access?

I rarely ever delete messages in Gmail, except for spam, and test messages to myself.  There is no need to.  At the moment I have several of those sitting in Trash, waiting for them to time-out (30+ days).  They never (to my knowledge) mysteriously disappear before the 30 days are up.

I think the easiest way to prevent messages from disappearing, would be to not delete them!  Then they would never find themselves in the Trash, which is where the problem seems to be (the fact that they don't remain in the Trash for 30+ days).  There is no Filter that can stop you from deleting your messages.

Andy

[Andy]

On Tue, Jul 18, 2017 at 3:33 PM, bill hansen <billhan...@gmail.com> wrote:

​..

. The emails I've mentioned (threads, forwarded emails) are never in All Mail, which is where Archived mail goes.

​Technically, ​Archived mail doesn't go to All Mail.  It was already there.  All Mail is everything except Spam and Trash.  Archiving a message merely removes it from the Inbox.  It already was in All Mail.

Regards,

Andy

[bill hansen]

Thanks again Andy - I did know that. But unfortunately it doesn't help with the problem I'm having. Those emails were once in All Mail, but they're gone under the circumstances I've described in my previous notes. - Bill

[bill hansen]

Hi Andy - Thanks for your thoughts, especially the info that most Gmail users never have the trouble I'm having. I should emphasize again that my Trash doesn't empty, except for that 30+ time period you mention. It's just the occasional email which is part of a thread, or which has been forwarded by me to someone else, which disappears. 

I don't often do my email with my phone. I go through the bulk of it ( 10 to 50 emails a day) in the morning, and again in the late afternoon. Only when I'm waiting for a time-specific communication during the day do I use the phone for email (or when dear old Time-Warner/Spectrum drops internet access, which happens about twice a month).

You're right, of course, that keeping every email on the desktop would prevent the situation I'm having. I do keep between 15 and 30 of individual emails on the desktop, because I know I'll need them repeatedly over the days or weeks (a particular bread recipe is one example). Many other emails which I know I'll need in the future are Archived in separate folders - Africa/Art/Boats/,Cell Phone/Computer etc. Right now there are 28 if those, some with sub-categories.

It looks like I must be doing something odd with those individual emails which disappear. If I ever stumble upon what it is, I'll let the group know. I do recall that others have had this same problem.

Bill

[bill hansen]

Thanks Jeff - but my problem isn't that  I want to delete only  part of an email, or that I don't understand what "delete" means. My problem is that the email simply disappears. It's not in Trash, All Mail, Spam, Archived Mail, or (of course) not in the InBox.

If I were prescient enough that I knew, every single time, that I'd want to return to an email on a later day, I could Archive each email I receive into a separate folder - but that would obviously entail far too many "folders". And I don't have that much foreknowledge, to recognize each and every email I'd need to look at on a later day.

I'd better repeat that this disappearance happens only with emails which are part of a thread, and with emails which have been forwarded. When I "delete" a simple one-transaction email it goes  into Trash or Spam, as it should..

Hasn't anybody else had this problem?

Bill

[Sean Murphy]

    I've had Gmail since it was Invite-Only, and I have yet to pass 50% of its capacity. I don't delete emails - I archive them, and if it turns out later that I need to find them, I can search for them (Google's speciality) or if I suspect ahead if time I might want to get back to that email, I filter it and apply a label that is logical to my mindset. Right now I have over 200 labels displayed on the left margin - more that are hidden because I never use them. I never need to look through them, I simply type"g" "l" and it opens a label search for me.

[Andy]

On Wed, Jul 19, 2017 at 8:05 AM, bill hansen <billhan...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Andy - Thanks for your thoughts, especially the info that most Gmail users never have the trouble I'm having. I should emphasize again that my Trash doesn't empty, except for that 30+ time period you mention. It's just the occasional email which is part of a thread, or which has been forwarded by me to someone else, which disappears. 

​Bill, now I'm confused.  First you said the emails disappeared from everywhere including Trash, now you say they don't disappear from Trash.  What, exactly, is the problem you have?

​Does something disappear after you delete something?

Does something disappear so that it isn't in the Trash?

You're right, of course, that keeping every email on the desktop would prevent the situation I'm having. I do keep between 15 and 30 of individual emails on the desktop, because I know I'll need them repeatedly over the days or weeks (a particular bread recipe is one example).

​...

​Why do you say "desktop"?​

The thing I suggested was not deleting emails.  This means they remain in your All Mail.

Andy

[Andy]

On Wed, Jul 19, 2017 at 7:51 AM, bill hansen <billhan...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks Jeff - but my problem isn't that  I want to delete only  part of an email, or that I don't understand what "delete" means.

​...

​You can never delete part of an email.  That's impossible.​

What Jeff was referring to, was deleting ONE email, versus deleting an entire conversation of emails.  The "delete" button near the top of the screen always deletes the entire conversation, all at once.  The entire conversation means that the original message and ALL replies to it, will be deleted.

(I'm guessing this is what you meant but you just stated it not the same way.)

If I were prescient enough that I knew, every single time, that I'd want to return to an email on a later day, I could Archive each email I receive into a separate folder

​ ...​

​Or you could just Archive all of them and not worry about "separate folders".

You can still locate the message at a later date by searching for it, or by opening All Mail and scanning down the list.

And by the way, as long as you have Conversation view enabled (which is the default setting), all messages in the conversation appear grouped together and you can't really send individual messages into different folders.  They would appear as if the entire Conversation is in all of those folders.  (In reality they might not be; but whenever you open one message, you open the entire Conversation, which could include messages that were not sent to that folder -- er, label.)

Andy

[Andy]

When I have a message I want to reply to later, typically I "star" the message and leave it in the Inbox (don't Archive it yet).

Once I've replied to it, I remove the star and archive that conversation.

Everyone has their own work flow that appeals to them.  Gmail gives us lots of tools to make this work.

Over time we have seen many people who didn't understand how the Inbox (and Archive) worked.  Some of them kept ALL their messages in their Inbox because they were afraid that Archiving them would make them inaccessible (it doesn't!), and then they complained that their Inbox was cluttered.  Some complained that messages never went away from their Inbox even after they read them.  Me, I find the Inbox most useful for keeping anything that I know I want to get back to, in the next few days.  Everything else gets removed from the Inbox, but NOT deleted because I know there is a chance -- even a slim one -- that I might want to find it again, perhaps 6 months from now.  If it's truly unnecessary (a complete duplicate of another message), then I might delete it.

Andy

[Rory McGuire]

Hi Andy,

I use the same system of star, reply, and archive. I do not have disappearing emails. I would suggest doing a security review and seeing what services have access to your GMail.

If you have POP access enabled and you have an email client set to only fetch important emails you might find that the 3rd party app is fetching the mail and deleting it on the server. You can set POP access to always keep GMail's copy in GMail Settings -> Forwarding and POP/IMAP -> POP Download -> 2. When messages are accessed with POP. The dropdown has a couple of options, one of which is "keep GMail's copy in the Inbox". That option makes GMail ignore the delete command from email clients.

You could still end up with deleted emails if you have Apps Scripts or something running on your GMail. Best option is the Security Review to see what apps have access to your email.

My emails in GMail go back to 2004, I've had two problems with lost data, one was that I hit my storage limits and some of the mails I was expecting never came through, and the other is that I cannot access some of my old attachments via the GMail web interface because they are marked as "unsafe". However even those are accessible for me if I use an external email client.

Hope this gives you some way of tracking down the issue.

Kind regards,

Rory

[bill hansen]

​Bill, now I'm confused.  First you said the emails disappeared from everywhere including Trash, now you say they don't disappear from Trash.  What, exactly, is the problem you have?

No Andy, I did not say that emails don't disappear from Trash. I wrote that my Trash doesn't empty, except for the 30 day time period after which Gmail deletes it. But those emails which "disappear", disappear from everywhere in Gmail - Inbox, Trash, Sent Mail, Starred, All Mail, Spam. I hope that clarifies things.

​Does something disappear after you delete something?

Once again - Emails which are part of a thread, and emails which have been forwarded by me to someone else, often disappear from everywhere in Gmail (see my  answer about) if I Delete them (send them to Trash).

Does something disappear so that it isn't in the Trash?

Now I realize that you're just messing with me, not trying to help at all. Time to end this. Sorry to have taken the group's time. I'll live with the problem.

[Andy]

On Wed, Jul 19, 2017 at 8:07 PM, bill hansen <billhan...@gmail.com> wrote:

​​

Now I realize that you're just messing with me, not trying to help at all. Time to end this. Sorry to have taken the group's time. I'll live with the problem.

​Sorry, Bill, I'm not trying to mess with you.  I am trying to help.  I am also trying to wrap my head around the problem you're having.  Some of the descriptions didn't seem to be consistent.  But that may also be because we are reading these things spread out over time.

It wasn't crystal clear whether things disappeared from Trash, or if they disappeared without ever having been in the Trash.  My questions were meant to straighten out that (mis)understanding.

I do hope you can figure this one out eventually.  Sooner rather than later.

Best wishes, in good old Ithaca ... the city or the town.

Andy

​