iPad 2 email replaced trash icon with a cabinet and accidentally delete emails.

[Magnetic1]

My email trash icon turned into a file cabinet and I accidentally deleted emails.
And they did not even show up in the trash folder.
What gives?
This can not be a built in feature.
Could anyone tell me what is going on?

 

[Junior]

Sounds like you're using Gmail (I only get the file cabinet on Gmail) and when you 'delete' your messages they're actually placed in archive, not the trash.

 

[twerppoet]

There is an Archive option for GMail (default setup) and iCloud. When turned on they replace the trash can with a file cabinet to make it clear that the emails are not being deleted.

In GMail you can find the feature under Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > GMail (your account). It is called Archive Messages. In my experience you end up with a coy of your email in the All Mail folder no matter what you do. I once fiddled around with some options on Google's webmail site and managed to turned it off, but not without turning off other desirable features as well. I gave up.

At any rate, turning it off will give you back the trash can and at least the illusion of deleting your email. And who knows, with the recent changes, maybe it even works as advertised now. It's been quite a while since I last looked.

The iCloud setting is deeper. You need to go to Settings > iCloud > Account > Mail (under Advanced). The Archive Messages switch is towards the bottom under Outgoing Mail Server. You can get to the same settings under in the Mail, Contacts, Calendars settings, using similar navigation.

It is possible some other accounts types have this option as well; these are the two that I know of.

 

[Doug.ie]

My email trash icon turned into a file cabinet and I accidentally deleted emails. And they did not even show up in the trash folder. What gives? This can not be a built in feature. Could anyone tell me what is going on?

THE COMMENTS BELOW REFER TO THE IPAD NATIVE APPLE EMAIL APP using a pop 3 or.IMAP email account:

When you use the Apple iPad email app for the first time there will be no archive folder listed in your list of mailboxes.
Go to settings and the email options, click on your account name, and choose 'send deleted email to either trash or archive'. If you choose send to archive an archive folder icon will appear in the list of mailboxes and the trash icon in the top bar will change to a filing cabinet. If you long press the archive button two options will appear in the drop-down window and you can choose either to send to trash or to archive. Once you have created an archive folder by doing this you can go back to settings and switch the choice to send deleted email to trash. The archive folder will remain in your list of email mailboxes. You will then just have to click the trash icon in the top bar to delete the email. Should you wish to move an email to the archive folder use the 'move to folder' option from the top bar and this allows you to choose the folder you wish to send the email to.
In my experience I have found that if you send an email to the archive folder and try to read it back it will read back if it is a graphic email (?HTML5?) but if it is a plain text email it will give you a error message that the email cannot be displayed because it is in the wrong format. Is this a bug in the Apple native email app?
Doug Dyer