One of Gmail’s most valuable features is its ability to prevent most SPAM from showing up in your inbox. Because this is completely automated, important messages sometimes get trapped inside your SPAM folder. Unless you know how to check it, you will never ever see them and you may miss something important. This is a folder that should be checked regularly (daily). Here’s how to check the SPAM folder and recover any messages you need.

1) Log into your gmail account and find the left hand “sidebar”:

Full_page_after_Login

2) At the very bottom of this “Sidebar” you will find a link titled “More”. As a note, you may need to scroll down that “Sidebar” to find it… even thought there is NOT a scroll bar.

Sidebar_without_SPAM

3) Click on the “More” link and you will see some selections drop down below. One of these new links is titled “Spam”.

Sidebar_with_SPAM

4) Click on the “Spam” Link and you will be brought into your “Spam” folder. This contains ALL messages that Google has deemed bad, risky or just plain annoying. From here you have the option of looking through the captured email, and choosing either to delete them forever, or mark them as “Not Spam”. In any case, below I only had a single spam message. If you’ve not checked this before you could have hundreds or more. If you highlight several email messages or choose just one, you will notice two special buttons at the top of your page. SPAM_emailOnce you’ve selected a few messages or are actively viewing a message, clicking the “Not Spam” button will send that message to your inbox. Choosing “Delete Forever” will do just that – delete the message for good. As a note, messages you mark as “Not Spam” will appear in your inbox at the date the message was originally sent. If you don’t keep your inbox clean you may have to scroll to the date it was sent to read it.