Outlook is commonly used to send and receive emails. It’s famous for its advanced features, including task and contact management, browsing, notes, and more. It manages your emails flawlessly, but what if you mistakenly delete an important message? Where does it go? And how can you recover it?
In this post, we’ll find out what happens to the deleted messages on Outlook and what’s the recovery process.
Permanently Deleted Emails on Outlook
When you delete an email from your inbox, it’s stored in the Deleted Items folder. You can recover it any time you want. However, if you’ve deleted the emails from this folder too, the message will then move into the “Recoverable Items” folder, where it stays for 14 days.
If the email is not restored within this period, it will be permanently deleted. However, you can configure the settings to keep the deleted items in the recoverable folder for up to 30 days. Here’s how to find your emails in the “Deleted Items” folder.
Recovering Emails from Deleted Items Folder
When an email is deleted from Outlook, they are moved to the Deleted, Trash, or Junk folder. Here’s how to recover these emails.
- Sign into your Outlook account and locate the “Deleted Items” section
- Select the folder to get a list of the messages you have deleted on Outlook and locate the ones you’d like to restore.
- Double-click the email and choose “Move” from the list of options. Select where you want to restore the emails.
How to Recover an Item That’s Not in the Deleted Items Folder?
An email can get permanently deleted from your inbox if you hit Shift+Delete. Similarly, deleting an email from the deleted or trash folder will remove the message permanently from your Outlook.
The good news is you can still recover these messages. They are stored in the Recoverable Items folder but for a brief period. Whether you have deleted a single email or emptied the entire Deleted folder, these steps can help you recover the emails easily.
- Log into your Outlook account and navigate to the “Deleted Items” folder.
Note: If there’s a Trash option instead of the Deleted Items in your Outlook inbox, you cannot recover the deleted messages, as Trash doesn’t support email recovery for the permanently deleted messages.
- Click “Recover Deleted Items” in the folder.
- Locate the deleted item you’d like to recover.
- Click “Restore Selected Items” and then hit OK.
If you are unable to locate the deleted emails in the recovered deleted item folder, contact your IT help desk service provider. They might use third-party email recovery tools to recover permanently deleted items.
Your IT admin will specify how long you can recover the items from the deleted item folder on Outlook. As mentioned previously, deleted items can be recovered within 14 days or 30 days if you have extended the period. If it’s been deleted from the Recoverable Item, you must contact the IT help desk. It can be restored using eDiscovery Center.