How to move an email to your primary inbox

Below you will find step-by-step instructions on how to move an email from the promotions or spam folders to your primary folder on desktop and mobile in Gmail, Outlook and Apple Mail.

If you’re anything like me, you probably don’t check your “Promotions” folder in Gmail (or the “Other” folder in Outlook) very often. It’s actually a pretty useful feature that filters out emails promoting products and services from your more important correspondence, and it saves me from spending a lot of time sorting through emails to determine which are important.

That said, there are many times when emails that I actually do want to read end up in Promotions. In those cases I either completely miss the message or see it very late. Pretty annoying.

And when it comes to the emails from Further Up, you never want them to end up in Promotions, right?

I’m just going to assume that you’re nodding your head “yes.”

Anyway, here’s how to make sure important emails end up in your Primary inbox.

If you use Gmail

Desktop
  1. Click on the folder you’d like to move the email from (in this case the spam or promotions folder).
  2. Once in the folder, without opening the message, click and drag the email to the “Primary” tab.
 
Mobile
  1. Open the Gmail application (now called “Google Workspace”).
  2. Once in the app, press on the 3 lines in the upper left-hand corner.
  3. Choose the folder you’d like to move the email from (in this case promotions or spam).
  4. Open the email you would like to move.
  5. Press the three dots in the upper right corner.
  6. In the drop-down menu that appears, select the option “move.”
  7. From here choose “Primary” folder.

If you use microsoft outlook

Desktop
  1. Open your Inbox folder
  2. Click on your “Other” tab (next to “Focused” tab).
  3. Right click on the email you’d like to move.
  4. A drop-down menu will appear and you can choose to move just this email or all emails from this sender to your “Focused” tab.
 
Mobile
  1. Open the Outlook Mobile app.
  2. Select the “Other” folder.
  3. Open the email you’d like to move.
  4. Find and press the 3 dots on the top right next to the trash can icon.
  5. In the drop-down menu select the option “Move to folder” and choose “Inbox.”

If you use apple mail

Desktop
  1. Open the “Mail” application.
  2. Click on the “Flagged” or “Junk” folder.
  3. Drag and drop the message you want to move into your “Inbox” folder.
 
Mobile
  1. On your iOS device open the “mail” application.
  2. If you are already in your main inbox, press the option “Mailboxes” at the top left of the screen.
  3. Select the the “Flagged” or “Junk” folder.
  4. Open the message you would like to move and tap the folder icon at the bottom (the second icon from the left).
  5. Select the “Inbox” folder.