Why I moved 45,401 emails back to my inbox — a gmail story
A week or so ago I signed up for a new service that would help me clean up my inbox (and save the environment, by not using the resources that are consumed by having a huge inbox). It looked smart. It looked like I was doing a really good thing.
But, then I needed to search for an old client email, and of course it was in the trash (thankfully Gmail holds onto trash for 30 days, instead of purging permanently).
Yesterday, I was searching for the login information for a program I signed up for 6 months ago, and a receipt for another purchase.
And, it was all in the trash.
The problem with the cool new tool I had used, was that it picked up the name / email address of companies who had newsletter unsubscribe links. And when I chose to delete the newsletters, I unknowingly bulk selected everything from them (including receipts, login emails to membership sites, etc)
I didn’t understand the rules (they were there, I just didn’t take the time to read them, I guess.
The only solution I could find was to move everything back to the inbox.
And now, instead of just bringing back the 5,000 or so emails that I’d saved in archives, I need to restore EVERYTHING (sorry for the all caps — but, yeah, it’s a big deal) that I’d deleted in the past 30 days. And go through ALL of it again!
Thankfully I already have Microsoft Outlook synced up to my gmail account, and I can get through 20,000 in about 90 minutes. So, I should have this project done before the weekend is over.
64,299 emails to sort through (again)
But still, what a great bit waste of time.
Why am I sharing this sob story with you? I guess it’s because I know that sometimes it’s good to see other peoples mistakes. Maybe we sometimes learn from others mistakes?
Or, maybe it’s because I want you to feel sorry for me… 🙂
Either way, I’d best hit publish on this post, and get back to the nitty gritty work of sorting through those messages!
Originally published at //loraleehutton.com/moved-45401-emails-back-inbox-gmail-story/2017/02/25/ on February 25, 2017.
