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I tried to create a filter to trash all emails from (!Athletic_Communications@sacredheart.edu) - an email address used by my school to spam us.

After applying the filter to all my old messages, it trashed everything. I guesse the filter system reads a '!' as "not".

Can I roll back the change - or do I have to restore ALL my trashed emails (over 1000) to get back the 500+ that were incorrectly trashed.

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    You should be able to filter stuff in trash that you want to keep, though it might be a more methodical process. If you know certain things you always delete -- for example, I receive coupons and stuff from a few vendors -- you can filter those out using in:trash from:johndoe@example.com and permanently delete them. Then, select all (and I do mean all of them) and then restore. That's one option, but it will be time-consuming. – Aarthi Apr 8 '12 at 14:48
  • I think that this is the only real solution. I wish there were some 'undo' function I could use... I just restored everything to my inbox and started archiving/trashing stuff again :-( – Zach Lysobey Apr 8 '12 at 18:14
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    An email address can't start with an exclamation mark. – dnbrv Apr 9 '12 at 17:58
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    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address#Valid_email_addresses – Zach Lysobey Apr 9 '12 at 20:34
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    @Aarthi The option to Delete Forever disappears once you've applied any filter to your Trash. – user13779 Apr 13 '12 at 17:25
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Gmail shows a preview of the messages that the filter will apply to during the filter setup I'd encourage you to review the results in the future to make sure they are what you expect. Unfortunately at this time it is not possible to revert a filter after creation, but I'm passing along your feedback. If you haven't already, make sure to delete that filter from your Settings to prevent it from catching any new incoming messages.

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  • Thanks Sarah! Yea, I remember seeing that it was a large number of messages it would apply too, but wasn't really thinking and just clicked it. – Zach Lysobey Apr 9 '12 at 20:26

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