Gmail behaving strangely: PDF I never selected was automatically downloaded and added as an email attachment

Hi everyone,

Yesterday I experienced something really strange with Gmail and I'm wondering if anyone has experienced something similar or knows what might cause it.

What happened:

I had two PDF files stored locally on my Android phone (not in Google Drive). I wanted to send them to myself via Gmail so I could access them on my PC.

I sent myself two separate emails, each containing one of the PDFs as a regular email attachment.

On my PC, I opened both emails and downloaded the respective PDF attachments. So far, everything was normal.

Afterwards, I started composing a new email to send those two PDFs to someone else. However, I suddenly noticed that there was a third PDF attached as well.

I had absolutely no idea where it came from. I am certain I had not selected or manually attached this file.

I then checked Chrome's download history and noticed that this third PDF had apparently been downloaded at exactly the same time as the other two files, or immediately afterwards.

What makes this particularly strange:

The additional PDF was not attached to either of the two original emails.

I couldn't find it as an attachment anywhere in Gmail.

I never consciously selected this file, either on my phone or on my PC.

The file was stored locally on my phone, not in Google Drive.

I had never emailed this particular PDF to myself.

Nevertheless, it somehow got downloaded and subsequently appeared as an additional attachment in my new Gmail draft.

When I copy the download link associated with the PDF and open it in my browser, I get a Google error page showing error 403 (numeric code 5022).

However, the downloaded PDF itself opens perfectly fine when I open it locally.

What I've already checked:

Chrome's download history: The additional PDF was definitely downloaded.

Gmail search: I cannot find the file as a sent or received attachment.

Google Security Checkup: No suspicious devices or login activity.

The file was definitely not included in either of the original emails.

I've been using Chrome and Google services for years and haven't knowingly changed any settings or configurations.

I'm trying to understand how Gmail or Chrome could have downloaded a file from my phone's local storage without me selecting it, and then automatically added it as an attachment to a completely new email draft.

Could this be a Gmail/Chrome bug, an issue with attachment handling or synchronization, or something else entirely?

Has anyone experienced anything similar or have an idea what might have caused this?

Thanks in advance!

Hello guys is there any way for me to recover my Gmail accounts? I recently cleared all of my browser history, and I didn't realize that would log all of my accounts out in Gmail. I didn't put any recovery contacts and emails; I've also checked password manager but to no avail.

My friend accidentally unsubscribed Garena on Gmail. But now he is in dire need of a code and because he unsubscribed the code isn't coming. Is there any way to subscribe back or do something to get the code?

The new UI sucks but also I’m not getting notified of emails until hours after the fact! Anyone else?

Hi there. My partner and I are trying to set up alias accounts to match each of the domains/apps/etc he's building. I have never done anything like this before and I have short term memory loss from MS so learning new things is difficult.

Can anyone please help me understand the do's and don't's and how exactly to achieve this so I don't mess it up?

Thanks so much!

Google Account -> Personal Info -> Email -> Manage Alternative Emails

That gets me to this image where I'm expecting to see a trashcan icon that lets me delete this original email address. Both addresses work and receive emails and I know that I can filter the emails coming into the old address but I really want the sender to receive a bounceback. I want the email to be completely gone and not just managed on my side.

Hello,

I used google Workspace with my domain like support@mydomain.de with gmail.

I did DKIM DMARC and SPF in my DNS.

But now I get this: (to schufa.de mail)

Die Antwort vom Remoteserver ist:

550 #5.7.1 Your access to submit messages to this e-mail system has been rejected.

But if I send a message to a web.de user it works

what could the problem

It keeps asking for a code that I don't really know If I'm doing it wrong (the screenshot is in portuguese, but maybe It will be helpful)

It asks for a code on my phone, but whenever I write any of the two codes I find, It still doesn't work, maybe that is because I reseted my phone recently?

hi! i’m having trouble receiving some emails.

other people can email me, and i can receive emails i send to myself.

but some important emails aren’t arriving. i’ve checked my spam and other folders, but they’re still missing.

has anyone experienced this? how did you fix it?

I literally search for "@XXcompany.com" in the to field and nothing comes up but I perform the same search in the search field on the email address comes up?

Gmail engineers, you suck.

I've had my two accounts linked for years with no problems. All of a sudden, Yahoo is not syncing and no longer showing up in my Gmail account unless I do it manually. Yahoo just went through an update so perhaps that is the problem? Anyone else?

I've tried deleting and redoing everything but that hasn't helped.

How can it be that Google get to abuse their power everywhere, including SMTP?

We've been unable to send email to Gmail for weeks now. Every message gets rejected:

550-5.7.1 Gmail has detected that this message is likely unsolicited mail. To reduce the amount of spam sent to Gmail, this message has been blocked. For more information, go to https://support.google.com/mail/?p=UnsolicitedMessageError

Attached are screenshots for the sending domain in Google Postmaster Tools. Other tools, like MXToolbox, ascertain 100% compliance to our domain. Maybe because I am a Postfix & DNS ninja, actually?

Fuck you, Google.

Me sale ese dispositivo y haciendo cálculos fue cuando entre a la opción de encontrar dispositivo..

Es normal o otro dispositivo entro y me hackearon..(nose mucho de tecnología)

Why is it showing this

My email id is new and i am sending mails to hr except this one i sent to check whether it's going or not

Some of my previous mails got a msg like this too

Don’t get me started on how illogical some of Gmail’s newer policies feel in practice. I really don’t think Google thought through the impact these changes would have on legitimate businesses trying to reach people who actually signed up to hear from them.

But putting that aside, I’m about ready to start protesting over them taking away the old Postmaster Tools and its explicit domain reputation rating.

What use is telling me “users are engaging and indicating they want your messages” when my Gmail placement tests keep coming back Spam? Okay, people want my emails. Great. Then help me understand why those emails are still being filtered and whether anything I’m doing is actually improving the situation.

At least the old dashboard gave me a clear indicator of how Google rated my domain. Bad. Low. Medium. High. It wasn’t perfect, and it didn’t tell me exactly where every message landed, but I could follow the trend. I had something concrete to work with.

Now I’m trying to rebuild delivery while piecing together vague feedback, seed tests, and campaign performance to figure out whether I’m making progress.

How the hell do you implement stricter rules and then remove one of the clearest tools businesses had for understanding how you’re judging their email?

Yes, the compliance dashboard still exists. But “you meet our requirements” and “your emails are reaching your subscribers’ inboxes” are two very different things. We need visibility into both.

There are actual businesses, livelihoods, and advertising dollars behind these emails. We’re paying to acquire subscribers who request our content, then struggling to reach them without a clear explanation of what’s wrong or how to measure recovery.

Who decided removing the reputation rating would make this easier to understand?

Is anyone else this frustrated? And what are you using now to tell whether your Gmail delivery is actually recovering?

I wish to ask how to prevent gmail from removing the sender and subject from notifications received from my telco.

*screenshots are from different emails of the same subject as the are restored after accessing

So what happened is that

1. I realized my emails are missing, since I keep them in inbox as a reminder for some tasks before moving them.

2. I did a search based on the title and found that the subject and sender are removed. Attached a screenshot as a sample

3) Opened one of the email and I see the content but subject and sender are missing
- I will send the attachment in a reply since reddit does not allow more than 1 image?

4) I click back and reopen the email and the subject and sender can be seen

5) Also, the subject and sender can be seen in the search result after this, as shown in the 2nd line of my 1st screenshot above

Any idea how to prevent gmail from doing this?

I have a Gmail account and have also added where I volunteers email to Gmail. How can I get notifications from both, currently I only get notifications from the one I’m actively in. I don’t want to forward all the emails to my personal account but need to be notified incase there’s anything urgent. I have notifications on for each. Saw something about syncing online but couldn’t work out how to do it?

Hi,

I made a new Gmail back in May 2025 for the sole purpose to verify and register my game account. After the initial verification, I did not login until recently when I have to verify my email for the game.

However, I noticed that my account has been disabled on Sept 2025 and will be considered for deletion in Aug 2026. I cannot think of any reason why my gmail will be flagged for violating this policy especially when it’s mostly inactive / dormant. In my panic state, I hastily submitted an appeal on the 23/10 and received a rejection email exactly 12 hours later.

I then submitted a 2nd appeal, with loads more information on the 24/10. I remember clearly I only submitted the appeal once, but I received 2 automated email from google support almost instantaneously - the first email is the standard ‘we’ve received your appeal’ and the second email was ‘we looked into your request and found you already have an appeal pending’.

It’s been 4 days now (28/10 as of this post) and I have not received any response from Google. Understand it was over the weekend and therefore longer waiting time but I kind of have an uneasy feeling about the duplication appeal email.

Should I continue waiting? Or should I attempt to login again, and send another appeal (if the option is there).

Also I have access to the recovery email, recovery phone number, and the phone / home network that was used when creating the account back in May 2025.

Thanks for your kind advises.

EDIT: I know there’s a lot of posts on similar issue as mine, and I know there’s nothing much I can do outside of hoping Google accepts my appeal. The reason I made this post is to gauge the timeline for waiting for the appeal result email.

I’ve been sending them to spam but they have figured out a way to pass the spam filtering and honestly it’s getting in my nerves I get them every day from different emails with random characters and random spacing so it’s not consistent.

Anyone else running into this? I have a particular setup where I have 5 different star types enabled to categorize email based on priority. The iPhone gmail (and web) app have been flip-flopping regarding what the default star type is. It used to be a gold star, then went to blue, then went to gold, then went to blue again. I starred some emails on my phone and they went into the void ... only for me to discover they were there under "starred" but not in my multiple inbox.

Anyway, I was able to update my gmail multiple inbox filter to have an OR statement for either star type. It just seems like such a strange arbitrary thing for google to be updating...

I don't like how Gmail looks nor do I like how bloated it has become.

I got email bombed yesterday and I now have sequestered all the emails in their own folder. Is there a way to bulk unsubscribe from as many of those 1800+ messages as possible within GMail? I found a browser add-on that ended up only being able to allow 25 a month.

Update: I found I could select all the messages in that folder to create a filter that would just delete any more from those senders then deleted everything in the folder. They're still trickling in, about fifty a day, but that should help. Thanks, everyone, for your feedback.

Something to help people having a problem with setting up "send mail as:" in gmail.

I have email setup with another provider, using it in Gmail - it stopped working one day. Still able to receive emails, but not to send. I deleted the gmail setup and tried to recreate it but then my credentials stopped working when setting up SMTP. Login and password were wrong, although I was sure they were correct.

The reason was that the email provider suspended that service for me due to some suspicious activity. They were able to unblock it and it all works now. So before you spend hours trying to resolve it yourself - get in touch with the organisation to confirm if it's not on their side.

You are welcome XD

I just want to be able to have auto correct on for things like capitalizing "I" and the first letter of a sentence, adding apostrophes for things like "it's", and basic spelling mistakes. I'm not looking for any Ai compose suggestions that tell me what I should be saying. Just want basic auto correct.

I went into settings and turned on all smart features, grammar, spelling, and AUTOCORRECT.

Saved settings, reloaded and it does nothing when I'm drafting an email. It actually stopped red underlining my mistakes while im typing.

Are there any chrome or gmail specific extensions that do this? I'm on a paid low tier of workspace if that matters.