Gmail is something that most of us use every day, most of the time with no problem. Unfortunately, some users make the mistake of not receiving emails. there are many things you can try to start recovering your emails.
You can get this error on your phone, computer or even your tablet, so we will write solutions for all these situations.
General troubleshooting
First, let’s start by looking at some key troubleshooting practices.
Check google servers
although rare, google servers are down for maintenance or unplanned issues. you can check the status of google workspace and see if gmail is currently down or has been down recently. If Google’s servers have been temporarily down, your email may not have been handled correctly. if so, we recommend that you ask the sender to send you the email.
send a test email
Another simple troubleshooting test you can run is to send yourself an email. Try sending yourself two emails, one from a gmail account and the other from another email service like yahoo or outlook. if you can receive emails from yourself, the emails you don’t receive are probably an isolated case.
check your spam folder
Don’t forget to check your spam folder! Google automatically filters some emails as spam, so the email you expect may be there. It’s in the left corner of the screen when you open the gmail website or app. If your antivirus has an email filtering feature, the email you’re expecting is probably here or in the trash.
check your basket
also, we recommend that you check the recycle bin. maybe you clicked wrong or accidentally deleted an email you were expecting. again, this is particularly common for antivirus software to delete emails they consider to be viruses.
go to all mail
Finally, there is an all messages option on the left side of the screen that shows all emails related to your account. If you can’t find the email you’re expecting in trash or spam, maybe the all messages tab has it. this is also where archived emails are stored. Since all it takes is a simple swipe left or right to archive your email, you may have sent it there by accident.
update the gmail app
You should always make sure your applications are up to date. update your gmail app via google app store or play store. An outdated gmail app can cause detection errors and other issues that may result in some of your emails being lost.
use a different browser
If you still haven’t found your email, try using a different browser. gmail only officially supports four browsers, so opening it in one of them should produce the best results.
you can open your gmail at:
- google chrome
- firefox
- safari
- microsoft edge
These browsers must have cookies and javascript enabled.
Similarly, if you are using the gmail app on your phone, try opening gmail in your phone’s browser. Sometimes the gmail app can have problems, especially when it comes to syncing and receiving emails in real time.
try gmail on your computer
For those of you on your phones and tablets, you’ll probably try gmail on a computer. Unlike your phone, where your app may be out of date, your PC browsers are always up to date. this makes it more reliable, especially for problems like this where a network or connectivity error might be your problem.
log out and return to your account
Logging out of your gmail account and then logging in may help resolve the issue by forcibly syncing gmail with google servers. this should show all the emails that are missing from your device.
check your gmail account storage space
Unfortunately, unlimited storage is not free. gmail has a storage limit and once you reach it, you will stop receiving messages. You can easily check your account storage by opening Google Drive. Your storage (should be 15GB by default for free users) is displayed on the right side of the screen. If your storage is full, you will need to delete files from your google drive or emails in trash to remove them.
gmail does not automatically delete your emails when you throw them in the trash. Google keeps it for 30 days before deleting it on its own. however, it takes up space while it’s in the trash, so we’ll have to delete them permanently. this is how you can completely delete or recover deleted emails in gmail.
check gmail filter settings
Filtering your emails is often a necessity, especially if you start getting occasional spam emails from bots and advertisers. Unfortunately, the email you’re expecting to receive may also have been filtered.
Gmail mobile app settings are limited, so it’s best to use your computer for this. If you don’t have a PC, you can open Gmail in your phone’s browser app. make sure you select the “show desktop version” option in the browser app.
on your pc:
- open your gmail account and click the gear icon on the top right corner of the screen to access your settings.
- find and click “view all settings “.
- go to “filters and blocked addresses”.
- Review the email addresses you have blocked or created filters for. unblock or unblock the email address you want to receive emails from.
If you have unblocked or unblocked an email address, we recommend that you ask them to resend your email to you. your gmail account should now receive the email without any problem.
disable gmail mail forwarding
Email forwarding is a useful option for users who switch to a different email address. this causes emails sent to your email to be forwarded to your new email. if this has been triggered by some mistake, your email will not receive anything new.
For those of you still on the gmail setup from the previous method, skip to step 3.
- open the gmail website and click the gear icon to access your settings.
- click “view all settings”.
- go to the tab “forwarding and pop / imap mail”.
- turn off the forwarding option and save the changes before updating gmail.
If your forwarding option was enabled by mistake, you will need to ask the sender to resend your email to you. We hope this solves your problem!
turn off your antivirus
This step only applies to those using imap in a windows desktop client.
Some antivirus programs have an email filter feature. this filters out emails that your antivirus thinks are a potential virus or have malicious intent. We recommend that you try disabling this feature in your antivirus program and refresh gmail or ask the sender to resend the email.
Alternatively, you can also disable your antivirus program from running at startup via task manager.
- press ctrl + shift + esc to open task manager.
- go to “start” and find your antivirus software.
- right click in the antivirus program and select “disable” to prevent it from running at startup.
restart your computer and see if the email issue is resolved. ask the sender to resend the email as well. If this has solved your problem, don’t forget to turn on your antivirus when you’re done! you can let it run again at startup by repeating the steps above but clicking “enable” instead.
consult the google administration console
This step is more suitable for users with a registered email with a corporate or gsuite subscription. if your email doesn’t end with “@gmail.com”, you can try to do it.
Ask one of your administrators to go to admin.google.com and find your email address. They can track all emails that have been sent to you or uploaded to Google’s servers, even if the email hasn’t reached your account. If the email cannot be found on google’s servers, the problem is with the sender.
google support
when all else fails, you can always call google’s fast customer support system. It is important to note that you should only google the number on their official contact page. there are a lot of fake google support teams out there so proceed with caution.
As a last resort, you can always ask the google help community for answers.