You didn’t find any folder titled ‘archive mail’? And now you tired of looking for the archived emails that you want back?
Gmail does not provide any separate folder for archived emails, unlike it creates folders for spam, important, slept, and other labeled emails.
Gmail can be a tricky little thing to handle when locating archived email conversations or unarchiving them. But some guidance will take you a long way! Because once you learn the proper way to unarchive emails, you won’t face any problems further.
Today we will discuss in detail this topic and give you tips regarding the same. So, let us begin.
What does an archive do?
If you do not know and by mistake, you have archived an email, here is your guide. Unfortunately, the archive is confused with the ‘delete’ option most of the time. But you must understand their difference.
Archiving an email conversation means removing the inbox label from that conversation. This makes your inbox more focused on emails that must be prioritized.
Archived emails are not deleted from your account and can be found later (about which we learn later on), unlike the delete option where the email cannot be retrieved after 30 days. Archived emails can be retrieved anytime from your account.
Archiving a mail is like marking a thing on your to-do list as done or writing it at last because it is less critical and can be ignored for the time being. Archiving keeps all the mails but declutters your inbox and makes it more organized.
So, did you see an email from your old friend, but you are currently replying to all your job emails? archive it for the moment and come back to it once you are relaxed!
How can you archive an email?
Talking about Gmail, archiving an email is pretty straightforward.
- To archive a single email: on your browser, you can click on the little icon with a downwards arrow on a box; it can be found next to the email (when it is not opened). You can also open the mail and then click on the same which will be located on the top.
Tip: You can swipe the mail to the right side to archive that mail instantly on your mobile phone.
- To archive multiple emails at one go: on your browser, as you start ticking the checkboxes besides the mails you want to archive, the archive icon will appear on the top. Click it to instantly archive all the selected emails.
How to find archived emails?
There is no folder named Archive in Gmail. But the archived emails can be easily found by following the below-mentioned steps:
Step 1- Login to your Gmail account by entering your browser or official Gmail app credentials.
Step 2- Locate the “All Mail” folder: go to the left side folder panel ˃ click on “more” > click “All Mail”; in the application, open inbox and swipe left to see the “All Mail” folder.
Step 3- Search for your archived mail in this folder.
Tip: in the “All Mail” folder, mails which do not have an “inbox” label are likely to be your archived emails. So, to fasten things up, just look at the mails not labeled as “inbox.”
How to search an archived email?
You can search for an archived email if you remember the sender’s name, subject, or any word in that email’s text. First, you have to go to the search bar and type the keywords of the email that you remember, then type the following words: NOT label: inbox.
For example, if the email had the words “latest products,” then in Gmail’s search, type the following- “latest products NOT label: inbox.”
Tip: do not forget to write “NOT” in the upper case for this trick to work!
How to unarchive an email?
Once you have located your archived email in the “All Mail” folder on your browser, right-click on the email, click on the move to inbox option from the options that appear on the screen after that. This will move your email to the inbox and thus, unarchive it.
You can also open the archived mail and then click on the “move to inbox” option displayed on the top with an icon including a downward arrow.
While on your mobile, you can long click the archived email > click on three dots on the top right corner > select the move to inbox option. Also, you can open the archived email, then click on three dots and choose the action to inbox option.
Did you know? – Your archived conversations are automatically moved to inbox in Gmail once you receive a reply.
Why you should archive your emails?
Gmail’s Archive feature enables you to preserve unimportant email messages without deleting them. The main benefit of archiving emails is leaving your inbox less cluttered. It is an excellent option if you are not sure whether you will need that email again in the future or not.
With this, you can also focus on important emails that require immediate attention from you. Archiving is like you are filing an email away for future reference.
Final Words:
Archiving emails is an essential feature of Gmail’s inbox, even though the lack of a separate folder creates some confusion initially. But once you get some guidance on finding an archived email and unarchive it, things become easy.
Archived emails help you focus on essential emails without deleting them to avoid disturbance. So, you make it quicker for yourself to find emails you need to reply to urgently.
We talked about how to locate archived emails on your browser and your mobile phone. You will also find complete guidance on unarchive emails easily on both these platforms.
You could comment below if you have any further doubts and tell us if this article was helpful.
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