emails to groups disappear

[billhansen]

Several times a year I need to make a Gmail Group, to send the same email to several people at once. I do this by using my own Gmail address in the To: line, with BCCs to all the other members of the group - so other group members don't see each other's email addresses. That works well, except that once the email is sent, it disappears from my own Gmail account. Others get the group email without difficulty, and I get my copy. So far, so good. But once I am finished with my copy and put it into the Trash, it disappears completely. It's not in Trash, not in All Mail, not in Sent mail.

This has happened with three of these small Gmail Groups, a total of about 40 to 50 emails, over a time period of a year or more.

Is there a fix for this, or is it a feature of Gmail?

Bill Hansen

[Andy]

​I could be wrong, but I don't see why this would be related to a contact Group.  Once​ you type the Group, it turns into a bunch of individual addresses, so it's no different than entering those addresses separately.

Why are you deleting your copy of the message?  Why delete something you don't want deleted?

Is there any chance you hit the Empty Trash link?

Andy

[Zack (Doc)]

Bill,

Two things are happening.  One makes sense, the other does not.

GMail recognizes its own message coming back in, and only keeps one copy.  That's just the way it is. When you delete your copy; which is, the ONLY copy, it's gone, from All Mail, and Sent mail.  It should remain in Trash for 30 days.  If you're waiting more than 30 days, or have clicked, as Andy said, Empty Trash, then that's why it's gone from there too.

Don't ever delete something you want to keep.  You have 15+Gb of storage.

On Sat, Feb 7, 2015 at 8:01 PM, billhansen <billhan...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[bill hansen]

Thanks to the people who responded.

Checking again this morning, I see that the last Group email I sent out actually *is* in my Trash - so I was just very careless when I checked for that email earlier. The tip that these Group emails are automatically put in Trash, but they are not stored in Sent Mail, Starred, Important, Drafts, etc.... as Zack says, that doesn't seem to make sense, but it helps a lot to know that's the way Gmail handles self-made Group mails. I'll be much more careful about checking Trash in the future.

Trying to answer the questions in those replies -

I "delete" these group messages for the same reason I "delete" most other group messages.  I get about 70-100 email messages a day (not a lot by the standards of many people, but still quite a few). If I left all of them on my Gmail Inbox, in a couple of days they'd be buried. If I'm pretty sure I'll want to re-read a message within a week or so, I *do* keep it in the Inbox. That way, there are only 20-30 older messages in the Inbox which accumulate over a couple of weeks, and I can find the one I want easily.

Once in a long while, I belatedly realize that I want to refer back to an email which I initially thought I wouldn't need again. Unless it was an email to a Group I made, I can find those in Sent Mail, All Mail, Drafts, Important - etc.

Messages which I want to keep for a very long time, months or longer, I Move to Archived Mail, where I file them under one (or more) of several subcategories.

I'm positive that I didn't accidentally empty the Trash, as such. All the other Trash is there. But now I know that I have to be much more careful about checking Trash on the few occasions when I need to go back to a Group email I've sent.

 

Bill

[Andy]

On Sun, Feb 8, 2015 at 8:17 AM, bill hansen <billhan...@gmail.com> wrote:

​..

. The tip that these Group emails are automatically put in Trash, but they are not stored in Sent Mail, Starred, Important, Drafts, etc.... as Zack says, that doesn't seem to make sense,

​...

​Anything that is in Trash (or Spam) does not appear in any of your other Labels, Sent Mail, etc.  That is how Gmail works.  Yes, they might have those Labels attached to them, but Gmail excludes them from ordinary searches.  You only see deleted messages when you look in Trash (or when a search includes in:trash or in:anywhere).

I "delete" these group messages for the same reason I "delete" most other group messages.  I get about 70-100 email messages a day (not a lot by the standards of many people, but still quite a few). If I left all of them on my Gmail Inbox, in a couple of days they'd be buried.

​If you don't want them in your Inbox, then take them out of your Inbox: Archive them!  You don't need to delete them.  There is no reason to fill your Inbox with everything you ever want to keep.  That is what the Archive button is for.​

Archive = Keep this message but get it out of the Inbox.

I routinely Archive every message the moment I read it, unless it needs further attention.

I also Archive a lot of messages I haven't yet read, but don't want to throw out just yet.

Messages which I want to keep for a very long time, months or longer, I Move to Archived Mail, where I file them under one (or more) of several subcategories.

​Archiving does NOT move a message to some sort of different storage.  The only thing it does, is make it not be in the Inbox anymore.  It does not affect its appearance in All Mail, Sent Mail, Starred, any of your Labels ... nor your ability to search for it.

​

I'm positive that I didn't accidentally empty the Trash, as such. All the other Trash is there. But now I know that I have to be much more careful about checking Trash on the few occasions when I need to go back to a Group email I've sent.

You know about the 30-day limit, where deleted messages vaporize.

​I'm not clear how your sent messages were deleted in the first place.  Did you manually delete each one after you sent it?  Or do you have a Filter that somehow recognizes when you've sent a message to a certain group of people, and auto-deletes it?

In any event, I would think that any message you have sent, is a good thing to keep around and never delete.  Unless you are filling up your 15GB.

Andy

[bill hansen]

Andy - 

Zack pointed out that messages moved to Trash don't appear elsewhere in Gmail, and you've reemphasized that fact. I wasn't aware of it, and it's undoubtedly where my misunderstanding and "problem" began.

I do Archive emails, as I wrote in my last note to the group. For the rest, even though I needed to ask the question about disappearing emails,I am a person of average intelligence. Perhaps that didn't some through in my earlier notes.

I'm hoping that I was just careless when I checked Trash and didn't find "lost" emails in past weeks, and that a more careful search of Trash will solve any future problems. You're right - I do know about the 6 month limit for Trash.

Bill

[Kenneth Ayers]

I believe its just 30 days for which you can expect emails to remain in trash, not 6 months.

[Marko Vukovic]

On Sun, Feb 8, 2015 at 4:22 PM, Andy <AI.e...@gmail.com> wrote:

​I'm not clear how your sent messages were deleted in the first place.  Did you manually delete each one after you sent it?  Or do you have a Filter that somehow recognizes when you've sent a message to a certain group of people, and auto-deletes it?

​I'm guessing he deleted the conversation, of which the sent message was part.​

--

Marko