It can happen to anyone. We accidentally deleted an email that we really need. And it turned out to be an important work file, an attachment, or an image. And now that? How can I retrieve that email? Is it entirely possible? Surely it can be removed permanently?

Well, there is good news and bad news.

Let’s start with the good news.

Restore Deleted Emails

If you delete an email, it hasn’t really gone anywhere. Even if you emptied your recycle bin or the “Trash” folder in your Inbox, the email is still not deleted. It’s just that your computer system now has no way of finding out where it is. But it’s there, still on your hard drive. By using special email recovery tools, you can recover deleted emails because these programs identify these ‘missing’ files and can bring them back to life.

Now the bad news.

Act fast and increase your chances

The bad news is that you have to act fast. You only have a short period of time to try to recover your lost email. Every minute you waste and continue to use the drive for anything unrelated to recovering your emails drastically reduces your chances of successful email recovery. Why?

Well, because your hard drive is constantly overwriting files to make room for new information coming in. If your hard drive is full and there isn’t much space or memory available, the email has most likely already been overwritten and permanently deleted.

Other problems with recovery of deleted emails

Not all deleted or lost emails go to the “Trash” folder. If you have experienced a computer crash or hardware failure or if your operating system is damaged in some way, it is unlikely that you will be able to recover the emails you have deleted.

Also, if you have not opened the email at all or it has not been deleted in the usual way due to file corruption, you will probably have less chance of recovering and restoring the email in its entirety.

Nothing to lose

Recover Deleted Email Programs searches and locates the emails you have deleted. You can search by entering a specific keyword, for example. You can then choose to preview the email to see its content and whether the program recovered it in its original state. You can also select to search for any email program you’re using (and need to retrieve), whether it’s web-based emails like Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail, or Outlook Express.

The best is this. Most of these email recovery programs are free to download. When they start scanning your hard drive for the deleted email and then manage to find it and when you are fully satisfied that that is your lost email then you can proceed to purchase the software.

In essence, you have nothing to lose (if email isn’t there, it’s not there) and everything to gain.

Well, at least you can recover your deleted email.