You’ve read that email message and you’re through with it. So, you hit the “Delete" key and it’s gone. Or is it?
In Outlook, deleting an email is a two-step process. Hitting that “Delete" key when you’re done with a message sends it to a folder called “Deleted Items". You might think, “Why not just delete the message instead?" I can’t speak for Microsoft, but my guess is due to something called “human error." People will unintentionally delete a message (or a contact, or a calendar entry, or a task) they meant to keep. If it were permanently deleted, that’d be it it would be gone, with no way to recover it. Sending the message to a folder called “Deleted Items" means that if you made a mistake, you can go into that folder and move the deleted item back into the folder from which you accidentally deleted it.
This does mean that every so often you have to delete the items in the “Deleted Items" folder. (I’ve discussed how to do this in other articles posted on SearchWarp.com.) But if you have a message (or contact, or calendar entry, or task) you know you’re never going to want to see again, there’s a very quick way to circumvent the “Deleted Items" folder and permanently delete the item. Simply highlight the item you want to delete, and hold down the “Shift" key while pressing the “Delete" key. Instead of routing the item to the “Deleted Items" folder, it’s permanently deleted from Outlook, never to be seen again.
About the author: Danny Davids has over 25 years of experience in computer support, network administration, and computer consulting.
Anonymous (1 year 15 days ago.)
if it is on a server and you did this can you still recover? Respond to this comment
Danny Davids(10,523) Danny Davids (1 year 4 days ago.)
If you're talking about an Exchange server or your ISP's POP3 email server, then no, you cannot. However, whoever manages your email server (your company in the former case, your ISP in the latter) might be able to. Keep in mind that when you go this route to recover deleted emails, what you get is not a restore of the individually deleted emails, but a restore from a backup source to a previous day's email file. You may find you've lost emails received since the date of the backup, along with any other changes you've made since that backup date (other messages that were deleted now show up, etc.). Respond to this comment
Paul from Australia (123 days 23 hours ago.)
I understand that files can be recovered once deleted using sofisticated software. Is there a way of completely erasing (short of a reformat) irreversibly deleting items in the Exchange Mail Box Respond to this comment
Danny Davids(10,523) Danny Davids (121 days 8 hours ago.)
Paul, when data is deleted, the data itself still resides on the computer; it's the header information on the data that is reset so that the operating system can use the space where the data still resides (although the data itself is not accessible by the OS). Software programs do exist that can recover the data without needing that header information. Even if you overwrite the disk space where the data was, some programs can still recover at least parts of it. So, the answer to your question would be a qualified no. Respond to this comment
Navneet from IN (10 days ago.)
Is there a way to permanently delete an open message ?
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