How to Recover Deleted Emails (Outlook, Gmail & More)

Updated July 30, 2026 •6 min read

Email holds our contacts, receipts, and history, so losing a message — or an entire mailbox — is more than an inconvenience. The good news: mail systems keep several safety nets. Here’s how to work through them.

Recovering a deleted email in Outlook

First, the Deleted Items folder — the obvious place, but don’t stop there if it’s empty.

Then “Recover items removed from this folder” — Outlook’s second-chance bin (for Exchange and Microsoft 365 accounts):

In Outlook, select the Deleted Items folder.
On the Folder tab (or Home tab in newer versions), click Recover Deleted Items From Server.
Select the messages and choose Restore. This recovers items even after you’ve emptied Deleted Items, usually for up to 14–30 days.

In Outlook on the web (OWA), open Deleted Items → “Recover items deleted from this folder” at the top.

Gmail and other webmail

Gmail: check Trash (messages stay ~30 days). For Google Workspace, an admin can restore deleted mail for a user within ~25 days of emptying Trash.
Other IMAP/webmail (Yahoo, iCloud, etc.): check the Trash/Deleted folder in the web interface, and look for any “recently deleted” recovery option. Many providers can restore recently purged mail for a short window.

Corrupted or damaged Outlook data files (PST/OST)

If Outlook won’t open, throws data-file errors, or a whole mailbox vanished, the PST/OST file may be corrupted:

Run scanpst.exe (the Inbox Repair Tool), included with Office. It scans and repairs the data file — back the file up first.
If the OST is beyond repair, Outlook can often rebuild it by re-syncing from the server (for Exchange/365/IMAP accounts).

A deleted account, profile, or an oversized mailbox

Re-adding an Exchange/IMAP account re-downloads server-side mail.
An oversized PST that hit its limit and corrupted may need repair or professional recovery to extract the messages intact.

When it’s the drive, not the mailbox

The steps above assume the computer works. If your email lived in a local PST/OST on a drive that failed, was formatted, or won’t mount, the mailbox has to be recovered from the drive itself — imaged, then the PST/OST extracted and repaired. Running repair tools on a failing drive risks the data.

The bottom line

Check Deleted Items, then “recover from server,” then Trash/admin recovery for webmail. For a broken Outlook file, run scanpst.exe on a backup copy. And keep a backup of your PST going forward.

If your email is trapped on a failed drive or in a corrupted mailbox, our email recovery service recovers Outlook and mailbox data for one flat price — no charge unless we recover it.