How to Retrieve Deleted Emails on iPhone

Have you ever found yourself frantically searching for an email on your iPhone that seems to have vanished? Whether you accidentally deleted an email or simply can’t locate it in the myriad of folders and inboxes, the possibility of recovery exists. This guide will walk you through multiple methods to retrieve emails on iPhone, from simple searches to more complex recovery techniques involving third-party tools and iCloud services. By the end of this guide, you should be equipped with all the necessary knowledge to recover your important emails, whether they were recently or permanently deleted.

How to Find Lost Emails on iPhone

Sometimes, emails that appear to be deleted are merely out of sight. Whether hidden in unexpected folders or simply overlooked, the native Mail app on your iPhone includes powerful search functionalities to aid in locating these messages. We’ll show you how to use the search features of the Mail app in detail, and we’ll also look at the most common places, such as the Archive folder, where emails often go unnoticed.

1. Use the Search in Mail App

In the standard Mail app on your iPhone, when you delete an email, you typically move it to a different folder, such as Trash or Bin. However, if you do not find the emails in these folders, it does not necessarily mean they have been deleted permanently. You might have accidentally moved them to another folder when you deleted them. In such cases, the built-in search function of the Mail app is useful to locate these misplaced emails.

1. Open the Mail app on your iPhone.
2. Pull down slightly from the top of the inbox list to reveal the search bar.
3. Enter keywords, subjects, sender names, or dates associated with the email you are trying to find in the search bar.
4. Review the results that appear as you type to locate your email.

2. Check the Archive Folder

Another possibility when emails seem to disappear is that you have not deleted them but archived them instead. The Archive folder acts as a temporary storage to help you clean up your mailbox without permanently deleting emails. If your email is not in the Trash or Deleted Items, it could be in the Archive. Here’s how to check and retrieve an email from the Archive folder:

1. Open the Mail app on your iPhone.
2. Tap ‘Mailboxes’ at the top left corner if the app opens to a specific mailbox, to access your list of mailboxes.
3. Scroll to find and select the ‘Archive’ folder within the list of mailboxes.
4. Once in the Archive folder, use the search bar at the top to enter details about the email you are looking for, such as the sender’s name or subject.
5. Tap on the email you wish to retrieve, then select the option to move it back to your primary inbox or another folder of your choice.

How to Retrieve Emails on iPhone

Accidentally deleting an email doesn’t necessarily mean it’s gone forever. The iOS Mail app and other third-party apps provide a few layers of safety nets before an email permanently disappears. We provide various strategies to retrieve deleted emails on iPhone, with attention on methods to recover them from the Trash and utilizing features within third-party applications. Whether the emails were recently removed or have been out of sight for some time, there are steps you can take to try and recover them.

Method 1. Use Undo iPhone Function

The ‘Undo’ feature on the iPhone is a general iOS functionality that extends beyond the Mail app, allowing users to reverse many actions quickly. Introduced with iOS 3, this feature enables you to immediately revert unintended deletions of emails and other data. If you accidentally delete an email, you can utilize the ‘Undo’ feature to prevent permanent loss. Here’s how to activate the ‘Undo’ function to retrieve emails on iPhone:

1. After deleting your important email, stay in the Mail app.
2. Shake your iPhone, and an undo dialog box will appear.
3. Select ‘Undo’ from the dialog box to reverse the deletion and restore the email to its original folder.

Method 2. Retrieve Emails on iPhone from Trash in the Mail App

When you delete an email, it typically moves to the Trash folder, where it remains until permanently erased based on the folder’s settings. By default, the Trash folder is set not to clear itself automatically after a specific period. However, you can adjust these settings through the mailbox preferences to automate clearing at various intervals—daily, weekly, monthly, or upon exiting the Mail app. This flexibility allows for manual recovery of emails unless the specified deletion schedule has passed. Here’s how to retrieve deleted trash emails on iPhone:

1. Open the Mail app on your iPhone.
2. Tap ‘Mailboxes’ in the upper left corner, then select ‘Trash’ or ‘Bin’ from the list of folders.
3. Browse through the Trash folder to find the email you want to recover.
4. Swipe left on the email or tap ‘Edit’ in the top right corner, select the email, and then tap ‘Move’.
5. Choose the folder to which you want to restore the email, typically your Inbox or another specific folder.

Method 3. Recover Deleted Emails with Third-Party Mail App

Not every iPhone user relies on the standard Mail app to manage their emails. Many prefer third-party apps like Gmail or AOL due to their additional features and user interfaces. While each app has its unique elements, the principle of recovering emails from the trash remains consistent across platforms. We will demonstrate how to retrieve deleted Gmail emails on an iPhone with the Gmail app. If you use AOL or another email service, the steps to recover deleted AOL emails will be similar, albeit within the specific interface of that service.

1. Open the Gmail app on your iPhone.
2. Tap the menu icon (three horizontal lines) in the upper left corner to open the navigation drawer.
3. Scroll down and select ‘Bin’ to view all deleted emails.
4. Locate the email you want to recover, then tap on it to open.
5. Tap the three-dot menu icon in the upper right corner of the email.
6. Select ‘Move to’ from the menu, then choose the folder where you want to restore the email, such as the Inbox.

Method 4. Retrieve Deleted Trash Emails on iPhone from iCloud

Sometimes, if you delete an email on your iPhone, the changes may not synchronize immediately with your iCloud account due to factors such as poor internet connections, battery-saving modes, or other resource constraints on your iPhone. To prevent the deletion from syncing, you should immediately disable all internet connections (Wi-Fi and cellular data) on your iPhone. Once you halt the synchronization, you can access your iCloud mail from another device to possibly recover the deleted emails. We will demonstrate how to access iCloud mail with a browser on a Mac and recover permanently deleted emails from iCloud, but you can use any device, such as an Android smartphone or another mail app on a Mac.

1. Turn off all internet connections on your iPhone to stop any syncing process.
2. On a separate device, open a web browser and go to the iCloud website.
3. Log in with your Apple ID and password.
4. Click on the ‘Mail’ icon to open your iCloud Mail.
5. Navigate to the Trash folder and look for the emails you wish to recover.
6. Select the emails and move them to your inbox or another folder within your iCloud Mail to prevent them from being deleted.

How to Recover Permanently Deleted Emails on iPhone Using Mac

Even after emails seem permanently deleted from your iPhone, hope is not lost if you use a Mac. Various tools and methods available on macOS can potentially recover emails that are no longer accessible on your iPhone. Methods from this section rely on the fact that your emails were at some point synchronized or backed up with your Mac, providing a possible pathway to retrieval.

Way 1. Restore Emails with Time Machine

You can recover permanently deleted emails on an iPhone by restoring them with Time Machine on a Mac, provided certain conditions are met. Firstly, you must have Time Machine configured on your Mac to automatically back up your data, with the emails stored in your Mail app. Additionally, the email account from which you lost the emails on the iPhone must also be set up in the Mail app on your Mac. Time Machine backs up .emlx files located in the Mail app system folder. However, it can be complex to access these files directly because Time Machine does not offer a simple way to view individual email files within its backups. Although it can be difficult to recover these emails, this method can retrieve important communications that are otherwise irretrievable.

1. Open Time Machine by clicking on the Time Machine icon in the menu bar and selecting ‘Browse Time Machine Backups.’
2. Navigate to the date and time before the emails were deleted. You may need to look in the Library folder (/Users/*username*/Library/Mail) within your user account, under Mail, to find the Mail system folder where .emlx files are stored.
3. Once you locate the .emlx files, you can restore the entire Mail system folder to a previous state that includes the deleted emails.
4. Exit Time Machine and open your Mail app to check if the emails appear in the account’s inbox or the originally synchronized folder.

Way 2. Use Disk Drill to Recover Permanently Deleted Emails

Among the many data recovery tools available for Mac, Disk Drill stands out as one of the best options for recovering emails. Disk Drill supports the APFS file system, which is standard on Mac system drives where the Mail app stores its emails. It also supports the .emlx email format in signature scans, which allows for recovery not just by file system pointers but also through deep scans. Additionally, Disk Drill offers a convenient file search function for scan results and a preview feature, making it easier to identify and view emails found before recovery.

To use Disk Drill to recover permanently deleted emails on your iPhone via your Mac, follow these steps:

1. Download and install Disk Drill for Mac from its official website.
2. Launch Disk Drill, and select the system drive where your emails were stored.
3. Click ‘Search for lost data’ to start the scanning process.
4. Once the scan completes, use the filters to narrow down the results by .emlx file type, or navigate to the path /Users/*username*/Library/Mail/V10/ in the ‘Deleted or lost’ section to find the specific emails.
5. Preview the emails using Disk Drill’s preview function to verify their content.
6. Select the emails you wish to recover and click ‘Recover’ button.
7. Choose a safe location to save them on your Mac and click ‘Next’ to restore the selected emails.

Conclusion

In this guide, we detailed several methods to retrieve and recover deleted emails on an iPhone, which range from simple searches in the Mail app to more complex recovery techniques with third-party tools and iCloud. Whether emails are just misplaced or seem permanently deleted, the outlined steps provide a structured approach to restore lost data.