Retrieve a deleted Yahoo email message

Ronald sends in a desperate query - "By mistake I deleted a bunch of emails when working last night. Is it possible to retrieve a deleted Yahoo email message?". Unfortunately there is no direct and simple answer to his question is... it depends whether further housecleaning has been performed - has the Trash been taken out?

All email accounts from Yahoo! come with 5 default folders - The Inbox, Drafts, Sent, Span and Trash. When you delete a message, it is moved to the Trash folder. To retrieve this deleted email in Yahoo, all you need to do is to go to this folder, drag-n-drop the message back to the inbox. Voila! Your deleted email message is recovered. (Drag-n-drop only works on the All-new Mail Yahoo interface version.)

An alternate way to retrive a message from the Yahoo email Trash folder is to Move it to the Inbox. This works on both the Yahoo Mail versions.

However, as I mentioned above, if the trash folder has been emptied, there is no way an email can be retrieved and the only option is to ask the sender to forward it to you once again.

Accidental deletion of email is a not-so-uncommon problem. Unfortunately there is no way to recover an email that's been trashed unless it first goes to an intermittent "Deleted Items" / "Trash" folder before you are able to get rid of it completely.

Two copies of important message - retrieve from local computer when email is accidently deleted from server

Here is a little tip: Maintain two or more copies of all important email correspondences. If you are a prolific user of the Yahoo service, I suggest you upgrade to Yahoo! Plus which will let you download Yahoo email and store them on your computer with an email program such as Outlook Express, Outlook, Thunderbird etc. The Yahoo! Plus upgrade costs a little less than $20 annually; the convenience offered is worth the money (a small amount anyway). However, if you don't want to spend a penny, I suggest you install the free Yahoo email program - Zimbra desktop with which you can download the emails in your account for free.