Environment
U-M Google Mail
Issue
User had a message in their Inbox or folder/label that no longer appears and they did not delete the message.
Resolution
NOTE: The ITS Collaboration Team recommends
using only apps and clients created and supported by Google or web browsers to connect to U-M Google accounts. Third-party apps and clients are created by a group or company other than Google. Google does not support the use of third-party apps or incidents that might result from using them. Please see Additional Information below, specific to this KB.
- On your computer, go to Gmail.
- In the Search Box at the top, enter what you'd like to find. Use the Show search options to perform more advanced searches (such as searching Mail & Spam & Trash). Search for a characteristic of the email that is "missing" - sender, words in the subject, etc. If the message is still present in the mailbox, it should appear in the search.
- Use Gmail search operators to narrow down your search even more.
- Messages found with no labels at all will have the Move to Inbox action enabled in the action row (icons above the message view pane - example: back, save, trash, more)
- Restoring the label-tag in the web UI will restore the message to the Inbox in an IMAP client (example: Outlook).
Additional Information
Google uses Labels to sort mail instead of folders like IMAP clients do (example: Outlook). Folders are a physical location that emails (a file) are actually moved to and saved in a file such as a .pst (Outlook).
Google's labels are tags that are added to the .html representation of your mailbox. Even "Inbox" is a label-tag that Google has applied. If a message has no labels at all attached to it, it should still show up in All Mail (Google's answer to viewing all emails) but occasionally does not. Labels are represented as tiny gray box with 6pt font to the right of the Subject in the message view pane.
NOTE: Apple Mail has been known to strip Gmail's labels, and is one of the primary reasons it is recommended to not use Apple Mail with Google accounts. This usually happens when a user has their account setup for both desktop version Apple Mail and mobile version Apple Mail and is using them both to view messages. There is no fix expected for this behavior. The work around is to manually reapply labels to all messages.
Need additional information or assistance? Contact the ITS Service Center.