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I've permanently deleted an important email from Gmail Trash folder. And as I understand it, there is no way to recover the email from inside the Gmail application.

But, I figured that my browser (Chrome) might still have the email text in the cache.

I've looked in c:\username\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cache but I can't find it there. Is that because the email content in Gmail is retrieved using AJAX?

Anyhow, I tried typing in about:cache in Chrome but it is hard to understand what is actually showing up. Does it show AJAX retrieved data? Does Chrome saves AJAX retrieved data at all?

Question: Is there any way to retrieve the email body text again?

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    What you want is not possible. It couldn't have been that important if it was in the Trash folder. – Ramhound Feb 26 '13 at 14:56
  • I know it was stupid to delete it, bu the fact remains that the email is gone. Please try to read my question again. I'm asking if there is any trace left of the email on my LOCAL computer. And yes, it was a really important email. – David Feb 26 '13 at 15:03
  • I did read your question. It still remains true that what you want is not possible. When an email is read within your browser none of the content is downloaded to your computer at least with Google Mail. I should note that a native Google Mail client on Android would be slightly different. You can confirm this by writting an email, sending the email, then deleting the email and hitting going to the previous page. This action would present an Google Mail level error. – Ramhound Feb 26 '13 at 15:33
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    When an email is read within your browser none of the content is downloaded to your computer — nothing further from the truth; everything is downloaded to your computer. What you are referring to is the content of a form (writing an email), which is not downloaded from a server, but produced locally. – Alex Feb 27 '13 at 7:21
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I don't know how Gmail operates in the browser, buy I assume it's a mix of HTML and Javascript. Some of that may have been cached at some time (and it's not at all sure that that included your mail text). Depending on your OS, if you remember unique keywords from that mail, you could try a search through all files in the cache directory and a search through free disk space with a file recovery tool (Google e.g. "search through erased file space" to find some). Your chances are slim, and any disk writes that have occured/are occurring on the disk make them even smaller, so boot that machine from a CD.

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  • Any cache file that does exist hasn't been modified but it wouldn't contain the contents of the email anyways. – Ramhound Feb 26 '13 at 15:35
  • I'm afraid for that too – Jan Doggen Feb 26 '13 at 15:36

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