Have you hit the delete button in error and watched in horror as your Gmail contacts – your lifeline – disappear? We show you how to retrieve them. 

That Undo link disappears after a few moments and when it’s gone you might think that it’s too late to change your mind. But that’s not actually the case. Click the More actions button again and this time choose the Restore contacts option from the dropdown menu. When the dialogue box opens, select a ‘time to restore’ point from one of the presets, or click Custom to define your own. We are going to choose 10 minutes.

Click Restore and the contact you accidentally deleted in the previous step will be restored. This safety net extends to 30 days, so it’s a great way to get back lost contacts.

Launch a web browser and sign into Gmail in the usual way, at www.gmail.com. By default, the inbox will be displayed. To open the address book where the email contacts are stored, click the Contacts link near the top of the left-hand column under the Gmail logo.

This will show all entries in the Contacts book. This is a dummy account that we use purely for test and demonstration purposes so we have got only three entries, but that will still be enough to show how the recover feature works. You can make up a name and contact details to test the service, if you like.

Click the empty box next to one of the names and a tick will appear to indicate it has been selected. Then click on the More actions button on the button bar and choose Delete contact from the dropdown menu. The contact’s details will disappear immediately. Now imagine that this was a mistake. If you are relatively quick, just click the Undo link that Google displays in the yellow status bar above the contacts list and the address will be reinstated.

How to declutter a Hotmail inbox

You can remove unwanted messages and junk from Hotmail in a couple of mouse clicks. We show you how to give your inbox a good, quick spring clean.

If you inadvertently marked a sender’s emails to be blocked in the future, this can be undone. Click to open the Options dropdown menu at the top right and choose More options. Now click the ‘Safe and blocked senders’ link under the ‘Preventing junk email’ heading. Select the misidentified email address from the Blocked senders list on the right and then click the Remove from list button.

Log into Hotmail in the usual way. If it doesn’t appear automatically, click the Inbox link on the left to display your inbox. It’s important to understand that the Sweep tool supports Hotmail’s junk mail filter, rather than replacing it.

As such, it’s a good idea to stay alert for any spam that turns up in the Inbox folder. To do this, click to place a tick alongside one or more junk messages in the inbox and then click the Junk link at the top. The message will be duly shifted to the Junk folder.

Now click to mark one or more emails that are not spam but are simply old or otherwise unwanted. Click to open the Sweep dropdown menu and choose the ‘Delete all from’ option. A confirmation box will appear. Note that this includes an ‘Also block future messages’ box: if you tick this, then emails from the marked recipients will no longer make it through to your inbox (we will explain how to reverse this in just a moment).

The Sweep menu also has a 'Move to' option: this can be used to sort emails into specific folders, rather than simply deleting them. When ready, click 'Delete all'. The process will take from a few seconds to a few minutes, depending on how many messages need deleting.