How to recover deleted emails in Outlook

Did you accidentally delete an important email from your Outlook account? Maybe you were clearing your inbox of junk messages and silly spam, but accidentally deleted something you wanted to keep. Or maybe you pressed the “Delete” button while trying to click somewhere else.

Either way, it can be scary to see an email suddenly disappear, especially if it’s something important, like a critical work document. But do not spread panic! Microsoft has some safety nets to help you recover deleted messages. This article will show you how to recover them.

How to Recover Recently Deleted Emails in Outlook

The guide will be pided into two main parts. In this section, you can see how to recover emails that you have recently deleted, undoing the damage immediately. Then, further down the page, you can find a tutorial on how to restore emails you deleted a while ago.

Both processes are simple and only take a couple of minutes at most. Here’s how you can find recently deleted messages:

1. Find the “Deleted Items” or “Trash” folder in the list on the side of the screen and click to open it. (If you’re on the mobile app, tap your profile photo to see the list of folders.)
   
2. Click or tap that folder to open it and you should see a list of all your most recently deleted items.
   
3. Scroll through the deleted emails and find the one you want to recover.

From here, you have a couple of options to restore the message:

• The easiest option is to right-click and then press the “Restore” button in the pop-up window; this will return the email to its original place in your inbox.
  
• You can also right-click, then click “Move” and select a folder to transfer the message.
  
• If you’re on a mobile device, long-press the message, then tap the three dots, before pressing the “Restore” button.

How to Recover Permanently Deleted Outlook Emails

So what if you look in the “Deleted Items” folder and your email isn’t there? Once again, don’t despair! Outlook automatically deletes items in this folder after 30 days to prevent it from overflowing, but there is still a way to recover them.

This method involves a secret and hidden folder. Stores older deleted items for an additional 30 days, in case you want to recover them.

Here’s everything you need to know to recover emails deleted more than a month ago:

1. First, it is important to note that this method will not work in the Outlook mobile app. Therefore, you will need to log in on a PC to get started.
2. Click “Deleted Items” in the left tab menu.
   
3. If you are using the Outlook desktop app, you should see a button in the top menu called “Recover Deleted Items.” You can click here to view all old messages that have been deleted but still remain on the server.
4. Meanwhile, if you’re on Outlook.com, you should see a small message that says “Recover deleted items from this folder.”
   
5. You can select the items you want to recover from the list and press the “Restore” button.
   

This will send the emails directly to your inbox or the folder you originally stored them in.

How to stop Outlook from deleting my emails

Outlook generally won’t delete anything from your regular inbox without your manual input. But it can delete items from the “Junk” folder automatically after 10 days and will also delete items deleted from the Trash after 30 days.

In some cases, Outlook may also be set to empty the “Deleted Items” folder every time you sign out of your account. You can change this in the “Message Handling” area of ​​Outlook settings.

In other cases, Outlook may not have deleted your messages, but simply moved them to a different folder. This may make you think that the messages have been deleted, if you can’t find them. Some accounts have conversation settings set so that messages from certain contacts are automatically moved to other folders.

There are also cases where Outlook may encounter errors or problems with the PST file – this is the personal storage file that Outlook and other Microsoft programs use to store all your personal data, such as emails. If the PST becomes corrupted or grows too large, Outlook may automatically delete some things.

How to stop this:

• There are a few different ways to prevent Outlook from deleting your emails when you don’t want it to. First, you need to check your existing Outlook rules. To do this, click the “File” tab, followed by the “Manage Rules and Alerts” button. This will show you all the rules you have set up in your account, if any, and you can adjust them accordingly to prevent Outlook from deleting certain emails without asking you first.
• Another possibility is that Outlook deletes your emails when you close the Outlook application. This is a setting that you can turn on or off, and you may have turned it on accidentally. To fix this, open Outlook, click “File,” and then “Advanced.” Find “Empty the deleted items folder when you exit Outlook” and uncheck it.
• Finally, if your PST file has become corrupted, you will need to repair it. This is a fairly advanced technique and beginners may want to seek help from a computer repair expert. If you prefer to do it yourself, find and run the ScanPST.exe program. You can search for it through the Windows search bar. Locate the corrupt PST file and select it in the Inbox Repair Tool window, then press Start to start scanning the file. The program will scan and then ask you to fix the file if it detects any problems.

Frequent questions

Can you recover permanently deleted emails in Outlook after 30 days?

Unfortunately, if you do not act quickly enough, you will not be able to recover your lost items. After the initial 30 days, the email is moved from the “Deleted Items” folder to the hidden “Recovery Folder” for another month. If you don’t recover it during that time, it will be completely deleted.

Where do recovered emails go in Outlook?

Typically, when you restore or recover a message from the “Deleted Items” folder, it will return directly to the original folder it was stored in, which is usually your main inbox. However, if you use subfolders in Outlook, your message will return to one of them. You can usually find the email through the recipient or a keyword in the title.

What if I can’t find my deleted email in the recovery folder?

Unfortunately, if this happens, your email has likely gone to the digital grave, never to be seen again. You may be able to contact the original sender and ask them to resend the message and give you a new copy. Additionally, there are some recovery programs that claim to be able to restore lost emails even after 30 days, but they don’t always work.

Why would anyone want to recover a deleted email?

Usually it’s because they deleted the email by accident. This happens more often than you imagine, especially when people are in a hurry and accidentally click the “Delete” button. Other times, people may delete something without realizing that they will still need it later.

What happens when I click “Delete” on an email in Outlook?

When you click the “Delete” button, your email will not be completely deleted from your account. Instead, Outlook moves it to a different folder, called “Deleted Items,” where it stays for a while before being permanently deleted.

Why doesn’t Outlook permanently delete things when I click “Delete”?

The reason Outlook has a “Deleted Items” folder and does not automatically delete messages completely is to protect users. There are many cases of “accidental deletions” where you may click the Delete button while trying to press something else, for example. Or, you might delete a message one day and then realize you need to read it again a few days later. The “Deleted Items” folder exists to give you a quick and easy way to recover those messages, should you need to.

How do I permanently delete an email from Outlook?

If you want to delete something completely, you’ll first need to delete the message from your inbox. Then, enter the “Deleted Items” menu and delete it again from there. Then as a final step, go to the hidden “Recovery Folder” by clicking on “Recover deleted items from this folder” and then highlight the message once again and click on the “Delete” button or the trash can symbol.

Never lose emails again

Thanks to Outlook’s smart recovery features, there is no need to panic when messages are lost. The next time you delete something by mistake or want to recover an old email, you can count on these two proven methods to recover it.

Have you accidentally deleted an important email in the past? Share your email organization and recovery tips in the comments below.