Maybe you stumbled upon this page because you’re feeling frustrated, staring at your deleted or discarded draft in Gmail. Well, worry no more! Allow me to guide you through four effective ways to undo a discard draft in Gmail.
The Official Time Limit
If you have accidentally deleted or discarded your draft, fear not. You have a small window of opportunity to undo it within 30 seconds. Once that time has passed, unfortunately, your draft is gone for good.
The Curious Case of Deleted Drafts
You might be wondering why these deleted drafts don’t end up in the trash. After all, a draft is an unfinished email that can be edited and saved for later use. Logically, if you delete or discard a draft, it shouldn’t end up in the trash. Think about it—if Google stored all these drafts, their servers would be overwhelmed with unnecessary data.
Let’s Get to the Solutions!
Enough chit-chat! Allow me to present you with four foolproof methods to recover your deleted or discarded drafts.
Solution 1: The 30-Second Undo
When you’re working in Gmail and accidentally hit the delete icon or discard button, don’t panic! You have approximately 30 seconds to retrieve your email. Look out for a pop-up in the corner of your screen that says “undo.” Simply click on it, and your email will be restored to where you left off.
But what if you missed the 30-second window or accidentally clicked somewhere else? Don’t worry; there’s another solution for you.
Solution 2: Mobile to the Rescue
In today’s world, it’s common for most of us to sync our Gmail accounts across multiple devices. Whether it’s a laptop, PC, mobile phone, or tablet, you might be lucky enough to find your discarded or deleted draft if you quickly switch to another device. Turn on “Airplane mode” on your phone or tablet, open your Gmail account, and navigate to the Drafts folder. If luck is on your side, you’ll find your draft waiting for you there.
Solution 3: Google Vaults
Now, this solution is only applicable to those who have access to the paid feature called Google Vaults. If you’ve subscribed to Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), you can log into Google Vaults and search for your email address. You’ll discover the archived text, even if you’ve deleted it from your Gmail account. Google retains everything, including deleted text, in the Google Vaults for your account.
Solution 4: The Panacea Solution
If all else fails and you’re desperate to recover an essential discarded draft, there’s still hope. This solution might just save your day. Here’s the catch—you must not close your browser with your Gmail account open, and a little extra effort is required to recover your deleted draft. Get ready to scan the browser process memory with the help of the HxD software—a freeware Hex and disk editor.
Follow this step-by-step process, and I’m confident you’ll be able to retrieve your deleted Gmail draft:
How to Install HxD Software in Windows 10
Step 4.1: Download and Install HxD Software
- Visit https://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/ and download the latest version of HxD software (version 2.5.0.0, at the time of writing this article).
- Choose your preferred language installer. For this demo, I’ll download the English version.
- Once the download is complete, extract the zip file and run the HxD setup installer.
- Allow User Access Control (UAC) permissions, and the installation wizard will launch.
- Select your language preference for the installer (I’ll choose English).
- Accept the license agreement and click Next in the wizard.
- Choose the destination location (I recommend keeping it default).
- Accept the default options on the next two screens of the wizard.
- Select “Install,” and the installation of HxD hex editor software will be completed in a couple of seconds.
- Finally, select “Finish” to automatically launch the HxD editor.
Recovering Your Discarded Draft
To demonstrate the process, I intentionally created and deleted a draft. Refer to the image below for reference:
Step 4.2: Launch HxD and Open Main Memory
Ensure that you don’t close the browser where you have your Gmail account open. The following steps can be applied to Chrome and other browsers as well.
- Launch HxD if it’s not already open.
- Go to Tools (in the menu) and choose the “Open main memory” option.
- Sort the process by clicking the “Process Name” section. You’ll see all the Chrome browser processes currently running in memory.
Step 4.3: Identify the Process ID of Chrome or Browser
This step is crucial yet tricky. Finding the process ID of Chrome can be challenging because there are usually multiple Chrome processes running. So, how do we determine which one is for Gmail?
- To find out, go to the Task Manager and navigate to Processes on your PC or laptop.
- Look for the Chrome process that is consuming the most memory among all the Google Chrome processes. Yes, Gmail consumes a significant amount of memory. Surprisingly, this is the only way I managed to find the process ID.
- In the image, you can see that I selected Google Chrome, which is consuming 154.8 MB of memory.
- Right-click on this process and select the “Go to details” option.
- Note down the ID of this process and go back to the HxD window. In my case, the PID is “5492,” as shown in the image.
Step 4.4: Select the Identified Process ID in HxD
- Look for the identified process ID in the HxD window (5492 in my case) and select “Ok.”
Step 4.5: Search for a Unique Keyword in Your Email
Now, all you need to do is search for a unique keyword that you remember from your draft email. This will help you find your discarded draft quickly.
- Press Ctrl + F on your keyboard and enter any unique keyword you used in your draft email. I used my name, “Dev Sharma,” as an example.
- Keep searching for the next word until you find your draft email text. In my case, it took three attempts, as you can see in the image where my discarded draft text is highlighted.
- Copy and paste the text to Notepad or your draft email again. In most cases, you’ll find at least 90% of the text untouched; however, due to the process of recovering from memory, there may be a few junk characters or missing text that need to be re-typed.
Take a deep breath—your draft is saved!
Video Tutorial
If you still have doubts, you can watch this useful video tutorial on “How to Undo Discarded Drafts in Gmail.”
In Summary
In the worst-case scenario, if none of the above methods work, retyping is your only option. However, I’m confident that out of these four solutions, at least one will help you recover your discarded draft in Gmail.
Please leave a comment and let me know which method made your day and saved your efforts.
