Gmail Changes - Internet chaos or problem?

[Morich]

I just got slapped in the face with a new problem for me to work around and thought it might be worth mention for others?

I have a small trip planned and reservations at hotels!
Maybe I have been too trusting of the internet systems and now they have let me down?
I have used GMail for a long time and they seem to have made a change, adding several new and folders. Does anybody else use those folders to keep track of things?
I had a number of conversations, reservations info, and things I needed to get back to at a later date! Many were small points on things I was buying or selling but some were really potential big things!

My folders in Gmail are now all empty!
I never knew how hard it was to confirm I have a reservation when I did not have the reservation number!

Any of you folks out there traveling and hope you saved a bunch of info in your Gmail?
Headsup on doing a check if you use Gmail and they are updating/"improving" it for you! Something has cleared all my info and a good part of what my wife had in her folders.

We are basicly screwed on communications!

[creativepart]

I'm not seeing any issues or anything missing.

Of course, I have no idea how you have your accounts set up. So, there's no way to help you.

You should at least have all of your emails in the "All Mail" folder - it's a listing of every email you've received or sent.

[Morich]

Yes, what you show is what I had. But at some point today my setup changed and I now have this but all my email that were in my folders I had built are now gone!


The main change that I notice is the "Chat" list. Not something I had considered and may be useful if I can now do texts on the keyboard instead of the phone??

But what I was shocked at finding is that ALL of the Emails which I had stored are now gone! The ALL mail folder is empty. Nothing recvd nor sent!

I had developed the habit of just making reservations and when I got the confirmation emails, I filed them in a "reservations" folder.
WE had done this when traveling and as we could look down the road to see where the next stop, we did not write down or print out those messages but just stored them online in Gmail.

I wondered how many other did the same without keeping written notes of all those details. I often looked at the sites, picked them and got the reservations. Rarely did I commit all those small point to memory but just filed it for later!
With whatever has happened to me today, it might have been a major headache if we had been on the road!
I do not currently have any techs that I am in contact with but there are times when I do not know them other than their first names and kind of where they are. I build folders like Ozona, etc. to keep my mind plugged in and then make a note of the name just so I know who is calling from where if I'm speaking to them on the phone. Much of the time, I never have any real contact, just info back and forth.

How that relates to RV world is when I think of our trips to the coast in either direction. WE would often have specific spots and make reservations, with the only way to refer back to them was the email confirmation we got back.

Do you other folks out there do that? I found out how hard it is to get info on a reservation if I don't have the right numbers!
Apparently where I plan to sleep is highly classified!

[wyocamper]

I've used gmail exclusively for personal email for at least 15 years, and for work exclusively from 2010 till I retired earlier this year. I've never seen that happen, but it would appear to be an account issue. I'd try logging out and back in first, and also try logging in from a different device. Also check trash, since gmail holds deleted emails for 30 days by default. Sorry not much help, like I said I've never seen something like this.

[Morich]

As far as I can currently see, the problem came about when the "chat" section was added?
The result is what really bothered me as ALL my stored email is now gone, not just in deleted but gone from all points! ALL files including trash, the sent and received are all gone.
Had we been on a trip and doing what we had normally done, we likely would have lost all info on campground reservations, etc.
That would have meant we would have reservations at campgrounds where we had not been before and often I would not know even the name and certainly not how to contact them to change or cancel!
Since we currently don't have an RV, we only had one reservation at one hotel and it was not terribly hard to make contact. The fun part of that was they could not tell me the confirmation number as that could not be transmitted over the phone! They had to send it through email!

I am now seeing ads, etc. for a new feature that lists as "Gemini"? I might guess that would be something involving AI?
Surely not something done by ISP, but more likely a Google thing? Possible Windows 11/ Google conflict? I have just been fighting the move to 11 but that has been several months now and this just shoed yesterday!

Got me wondering how many will be getting a surprise if it is some type of slow, progressive rollout?
Any of you other folks notice a new symbol, icon, whatever at the top for "Gemini"?

Logging out and back in sounds like a good move but it has been so long since I logged in, I will have to study HOW to log out!
So I go to "help" and it seems that is a bit slow as they show no changes in the last FIVE years?

[wyocamper]

In the top far right on the address bar line, next to the 3-dots, should be round circle with your initial in it. I would assume an R for you. Click on that and it will show you your account, tell you if Sync is on or not, log out, and your profiles. First make sure that you're logged in using the correct profile. I would then log out and log back in and see if that helps.

[Morich]

Thanks, will play with that for a bit!
Some days I need a dog and white cane to guide me to things!

[wahoonc]

No issues here and I am a heavy Gmail user. I have 4 separate accounts, plus two business accounts. I agree with wyocamper, check and make sure you are synced and are using the correct account.

Aaron

[Morich]

I'm finding the help section is not correct for the Windows 11 that I am now using. To log out, I finally stumbled into needing to turn off sync first and that brought a space to log off!
Can you tell me if you are on 11 and do you have the Gemini symbol at top right? I may not have noticed is but it seems my email problem with losing most everything came about at near the same time I got the Gemini?
Odd timing or related is a big question?
I have not found what I would use the Gemini for and would be quite happy without it, if it creates some problem.
It seems to be a change that came about without me knowing it was coming, so little idea of what, how, or why, it has shown up now.

Are you familiar with Gemini that appears to be an app?

Logging out and back in doesn't give any changes.

[Morich]

Nothing like a few phones calls and spending the day on hold when trying to figure things!
I don't know what happened where nor when as I never got details but enough to settle my main question.
Seems there are folks in the sales group who know they are getting a bunch of complaints about lost email and they are aware of changes being made but nobody knew anything!

I think I used to work with the same group??
Sometimes when folks are doing the input on a new change, they may not quite get the fingers on the right keys!

I can relate to that as my fingers are often on the wrong keys!
My info is lost and seems no way to recover it, but that's for another day! Moving on!

[DNC]

You may be able to recover your emails if they are backed up to your computer or somewhere in the cloud. They will have a post extension.

[Morich]

I've resolved my issues and moving on. Just another thing to avoid!
It has already taken more time to sort than it was saving to store things in such a simple way, so I will avoid that in the future.
I would have assumed I had some problem with the way I did something as I have been changing to Windows 11. But the point on that is my wife has also loss about half of her stored info, putting it highly unlikely we both did something wrong at the same time on different machines!
The most obvious change was when Gemini showed up!
But it is not something for me to spend any more time on sorting !

But I do thank you for the idea!

[Wayne M]

Just for info:
I never use web mail for important stuff, I use client email. Client email is email that resides on your computer. You would still be using GMail but it would be on the computer and not on the web. Then, any folders you create are on the computer and hopefully backed up faithfully. Client email, in my opinion, is more robust and intuitive than web based email.

I go way back to the MA Bell days of 300 baud modems. Back then there wasn't much security embedded in software. One of the things was to create emial accounts to be used for certain categories. I have over 10 of those emails still hanging around and every one of them is automatically forwarded to one email and that is a client email on my computer. I pigeon hole the important stuff. 90% or more can be answered through my main email.

Thunderbird is one of the clients I used over the years and it was good. Now I use Apple Mail client residing on my computer. Everything comes into that mail client.

Just sayin'.

p.s., I believe Gmail has an email client for mobile devices and desktop computers.

Webmail vs Email Client This is just information on Web Mail/Client Email. There are many FREE programs out there for an email client.