How To Find Archived Emails On iPhone & Unarchive Them
Sorting out emails in the iPhone’s Mail app is simple, but a single swipe can accidentally archive mail. Unfortunately, this is very common, especially for new iPhone users who haven’t adjusted to the screen. So, how can you find archived emails on your iPhone and unarchive them?
Table of Contents
- How do I get my archived emails back on my iPhone?
- Where Do You Find Archived Emails on iPhone?
- How Do You Unarchive Emails on iPhone?
- What if You Archived Your Emails a Long Time Ago?
- What if You Actually Deleted Your Emails?
- How Can You Avoid Accidentally Archiving Emails?
- Key Takeaways
How do I get my archived emails back on my iPhone?
On iPhones, archived emails go to in the archive folder, where you can store mail to avoid cluttering your primary inbox. To find the archived emails, go to Mailboxes and click on Archive. To unarchive them, open the specific email, tap move, and choose inbox to return it to the primary inbox.
It’s easy to lose an email in the archive folder unknowingly, but it’s just as easy to bring it back. Let’s get into the details of how archiving emails on an iPhone works, how to access the archived emails, and how to unarchive them.
Where Do You Find Archived Emails on iPhone?
You can find archived emails on an iPhone in the archive folder. The archive folder is a separate mailbox that allows you to store emails for future use and helps you deal with clutter in your main mailbox.
The archive folder is ideal for storing emails you don’t need at the moment but may want later. Moving the emails to the archive folder will only keep them in a different location and won’t delete them from your device.
If you archived an important email on your iPhone by mistake and need to access it but you can’t seem to find it, follow these steps to retrieve it:
- Open the Mail app.
- Select “Mailboxes” on the left side of your screen.
- Select “Archive,” then choose the specific archive folder you want to access. Different accounts have different archive folders, so you’ll have to know the account the email came from.
- You can check for the email once you’re in the archived mailbox.
- If it’s been a while since you archived the email, you could try finding it using the search bar. Just type the sender’s name, the email title, or any important text contained in the email.
If you don’t know the exact location of the email you’re looking for, go to “Mailbox“ and click on “All Inboxes,” then scroll through the emails until you find the specific one.
Finding the email will be easier if you remember the email’s title or the date you received it to avoid spending a lot of time digging through all the inboxes.
How Do You Unarchive Emails on iPhone?
If you archived an email on your iPhone by mistake, you can unarchive it and return it to its original inbox just as easily as you archived it. Follow these steps to do so:
Using the Mail App
- Open the Mail App, which is represented by a blue icon with a white envelope labeled “Mail.” It’s usually at the bottom of the home screen.
- Select “Mailboxes.”
- Choose “All Mail.”
- Select “Edit” at the top-right corner of your screen. You might have to wait as it takes a few moments for the button to appear.
- Select the email you want to unarchive by tapping on the circle next to that email. A blue check symbol will appear on the left side of the email. You can restore multiple emails by tapping each corresponding circle.
- Tap “Move” at the bottom of the screen.
- Click on “Inbox” to move your selected email back into the primary mail inbox.
Using the Gmail App
- Open the Gmail app, which is represented by an icon has a white envelope with a huge red “M.” If you installed the app from the App Store, you should find it somewhere on the home screen.
- If you’ve never logged into your email via the Gmail app, tap “Sign In,” then enter your Google account information to continue.
- Select the icon with the three little horizontal lines at the top-left corner of your screen.
- Scroll down a bit and choose “All Mail.”
- Select the email you want to unarchive. Your phone will display the contents of the email.
- Select the three dots at the top-right corner of the screen.
- Select “Move to Inbox” to move your selected email to your primary mail folder.
Now that you’ve unarchived your emails and your inbox is back to normal, you’re probably wondering how you archived them in the first place. Often, emails end up in the archive folder if you’re not paying attention while scrolling through your primary inbox.
You could have accidentally archived them using a swipe gesture or a tap on the red “Archive” button. When marking emails as read or flagging something as unread, it’s very easy to tap on the “Archive” button unknowingly instead of the “Mark” button as you intended, because the eye naturally tends to focus on the big red button.
Looking at all of this from a touch UI standpoint, it makes sense. It can be a bit unintuitive to new iOS users, and with the smaller-sized iPhone screens, it seems particularly easy to touch the wrong thing unknowingly and send your emails into the archive folder.
While extra care and focus are all you need to avoid archiving your emails by mistake, sometimes the emails go to the archive folder even if you didn’t tap the archive button. This mainly occurs if there’s something wrong with your iPhone’s system or screen.
You’ll need to have an expert check it out and fix it to avoid future occurrences of your phone sending important emails seemingly into oblivion.
What if You Archived Your Emails a Long Time Ago?
Even if you archived your emails months ago, they should still be in your archives. Go through the same steps to send the emails back to your inbox.
Sometimes, you might need to use the search feature to find your emails. Swipe downwards to find the search box and type in keywords to find your old emails.
What if You Actually Deleted Your Emails?
At worst, you might have deleted an important email and have no way to get it back. However, it is more likely that you can find your email in your trash folder and bring it back to your inbox. If your trash folder has not been emptied, your emails are still there.
Bringing an email back from your trash folder is similar to bringing it back from your archives folder. Accidentally deleting mail is just as easy as accidentally archiving it, and it is just as easy to restore.
You Can Shake Your iPhone to Undo a Delete
If you immediately notice that you accidentally deleted an email, you can shake your iPhone and it will undo it and send the email back to your inbox. However, this doesn’t work if you don’t immediately notice that you deleted an email.
When you shake your phone, a menu will come up, with a button saying undo trash and another saying cancel. Tap undo trash, and your email will return to your inbox.
Removing Emails From the Trash Folder
After opening the app and logging in to your account, tap the trash folder. Tap the email you want to undelete, tap the arrow, and then select which mail folder you want to move it to. Choose inbox and your email should be restored.
Does the Trash Folder Automatically Empty?
You can decide how long emails remain in your trash folder before they are permanently deleted. If you are worried about losing an important email, be on the safe side and increase the time.
To increase the time, tap iCloud Mail Settings, then tap advanced, and then remove. Tapping remove will let you change the time interval before deleted emails are gotten rid of forever.
How to Permanently Delete Emails
You can instantly delete everything in your trash folder permanently if you are sure there is nothing you want to save. First, tap mailboxes, then tap trash. Tap edit and then tap the delete all button.
How Can You Avoid Accidentally Archiving Emails?
The most common way to accidentally archive an email is probably to tap archive while swiping your phone.
You might also accidentally tap archive while trying to tap something else. For example, you might be trying to mark something as read, but tap archive instead. People unfamiliar with the operating system can easily tap the wrong button.
Is This a Common Problem?
Even people who are very familiar with the iPhone mail app can make these mistakes, so sending emails to your archives accidentally is a common problem. While the iPhone mail interface is simple and easy to understand, it is somewhat flawed. The archive button, even though it is not commonly used, stands out and is easy to accidentally click if you aren’t paying attention.
It is more common with smaller touch screens than with larger ones. It is easier to accidentally delete or archive your emails on an iPhone than on an iPad where the icons are bigger.
Key Takeaways
- Archiving is a useful feature because it helps you organize your email. You can keep older and less important emails in your archive instead of your inbox.
- It is common for people to accidentally archive or delete emails because you can tap the wrong buttons on a small touchscreen. Even people experienced with iPhone mail can accidentally archive emails.
- You can easily get archived emails back by opening your archive and moving them back to your inbox. Even deleted emails can be restored most of the time by moving them from the trash folder to the inbox.