Recover Deleted Email in Microsoft Outlook from Any Folder
Oct 10th, 2008 by MrGroove
Recovering Deleted Items/Email from any Folder in Outlook 2007 is a trick that’s been around for a long time. I think the first time I found it was back in the Outlook 2003 days. It’s a very practical tip because if you ever MOVE an email from your Inbox or other Folder, the only way to recover it is using the Recover Deleted Items command. Unfortunately however, that command is not enabled by default on any folder EXCEPT the Deleted Items folder. So, as you can imagine, this tip can be a life saver! BUT, before I review the How-To, let’s first go over the basics around deleting email in Outlook. Yeah yeah I know… what could be simpler than deleting email? True, it’s a complex task but, a lot of people honestly don’t fully understand it so let’s spend a paragraph to quickly review it.
3 Different Ways to Delete Email in Outlook 
1st Method
Let’s say your reading an email in your Inbox. If you Delete the mail by Pressing the Delete Key on the keyboard or Highlight the Email then Click the X icon up in the Outlook Toolbar, the email is deleted. Well, not really.
When an email is deleted in Outlook, it actually just moves the email to the Deleted Items Folder where you can go in and recover should in the event you delete an email by accident. To “finish” the job, just Delete the email again in the Deleted Items folder or Click Tools, Empty Deleted Items Folder. This will permanently delete everything sitting in the Deleted Items Folder (well… kinda. I’ll talk about this more later).
2nd Method
Some people (me) don’t want useless email (that I’ve already deleted once) cluttering up their mailbox and using up their Quota space on the mailbox server AND, I don’t want to spend time emptying my Deleted Items folder (Recycle Bin for Outlook). So, to permanently delete something from the Inbox (or any other folder in Outlook) simple hold down the Shift key and Press Delete (or Click the X icon on the Outlook Toolbar). If you did it correctly you will get the following prompt asking you – ARE YOU SURE?
If you click YES, the email will be permanently deleted and NOT moved to the Deleted Items folder.
3rd Method
The last method of deleting an email item in Outlook is MOVING email from your Mailbox to a PST file. Essentially, when you MOVE an email from anywhere in your Outlook account to a PST, it essentially uses the Permanently Delete feature (from the 2nd Method above) then copies the email to your PST file. So, if you ever go looking for the email, it will be GONE unless that is you use the steps below to recover Permanently deleted emails from your Deleted Items and other folders in Outlook.
Ok, now that you are all EXPERTS in how Outlook Deletes email <phew> let’s get right into the GUTS of this!
Recover Permanently Deleted Email Items From the Outlook Deleted Items Folder
Even if you empty your Deleted Items folder, you can still recover the deleted email for a short period of time (the exact duration depends on how the Exchange server is configured).
1. Click your Deleted Items folder, Click Tools, Click Recover Deleted Items
2. Click the Email you want to recover, Click Recover Selected Items Icon (as shown below) to recover the email.
Note – If you click the first Icon, it will select ALL emails being stored in the “Dumpster Bin” or Deleted Items archive. You can then either choost Recove Deleted Items or press the X Icon to purge them all off the server. Security Paranoid users (or ppl just trying to cover their tracks…) use this method to delete all traces of emails off a server…
Once the recovery is completed, the recovered emails will show up in your Deleted Items folder again.
Recover Deleted Items from All Folders
Recovering Permanently Deleted Items from your Deleted Items folder (that sounds funny) is simple because the feature is ON by default in Outlook 2000, 2003 and Outlook 2007. This is not the case unfortunately for all other folders. This is important because if your like me and you Press Shift-Delete on emails in your Inbox, Sent Items or other folders, the email item will remain there until the file is purged Permanently by the server (as mentioned above, this time varies depending on the Exchange Server config.).
So what we must do it quickly make a Registry change on your computer to Enable the feature and then the process will work exactly the same way as it did above in Steps 1 and 2. With that said, let’s get right into it.
Note: If your not comfortable modifying your registry Steps 3 – 6, just click HERE to download a .reg file. Save the file to your Hard Drive and Launch it. It will automatically update your registry for you and configure all folders so you can Recover Deleted items from them.
IE users can just Click the Link above but Firefox Users might need to Right Click the link above and Click Save Link As…
3. Close Outlook, Click Start Button and Type Regedit32 and Press Enter Key to open the Windows Registry Editor
Note: Screen Shot taken from Windows Vista but the command is the same for Windows XP. Just Click Start, Run and Type regedt32 and press Enter
4. Browse to My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Exchange\Client\Options
5. Click Edit, New, DWORD Value
6. Type the name DumpsterAlwaysOn, Double Click the new Entry and type a 1 to set the value
Again: If your not comfortable modifying your registry Steps 3 – 6, just click HERE to download a .reg file, save it to your PC and run it.
All done! Close the Windows Registry Editor and Open Microsoft Outlook.
If you click on your Sent Items or your Inbox, you will notice you have a new command under Tools menu item as shown from the screen snip to the right. The next time you do a Shift-Delete on an email and Permanently delete it, or move a file from your Inbox directly to a .PST and need to recover it for some reason, you CAN! Just Click on your Inbox, Tools, Recover Deleted Items! VERY Groovy indeed!
Questions? Comments? Would love to hear from you! Please post your Comments here and your Questions in the Free Support Forum!
Tags: microsoft-outlook, email, recovery, undelete, dumpsteralwayson, how-to
Hello Mr. Groove,
Tks so much for your detailed instruction!
I have accidently deleted permanently so many mails. I want to recover it but i could not find the recover deleted items in the tools menu… Despite the fact that i have added the Dword Value - DumpsterAlwaysOne as instructed. But the outlook still does not appear the “recover deleted items” in the tools. I’m using Microsoft Outlook 2003. What should I do to have this option? Pls help!!!
Brilliant instructions. Worked a treat for me.
In response to Trang, is your Dword value DumpsterAlwaysOne or DumpsterAlwaysOn ? It should be the latter.
@Trang
Hello Trang. Steve has it right. From your comment it appears you might have a typo in the registry Dword you added. Verify and get back to us here on your status!
@Steve
Thanks for the keen observation and the feedback!
THIS WAS INCREDIBLE! Thank you so much! It totally worked. My IT department is very slow and it would’ve taken them all day to get around to restoring my deleted inbox. This made my day!
This is a great guide and it was very helpful until I realized that the outlook on these computers are not on an exchange server. Are all my “accidentally deleted inbox email” really gone? Any ideas??
Thanks
@Ravi - Hello. Well, although there’s not a “perfect” solution, there IS a solution for recovering email your Outlook PST files. You see, an Outlook PST file is nothing more than a small database. As long as you don’t use the Outlook “COMPACT” feature, email that gets deleted in the .PST file is not actually deleted. The process to recover the mail is not simple however (Requires a HEX Editor and a Microsoft tool called ScanPST.exe). So, what I’ll do is write up a quick How-To Article today which explains the Step by Step process.
Are you running Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2003?
Hi Guys,
I also can’t see recover deleted items in Tools menu. I have tried and retried but can’t see the problem.
I am using Windows XP and Microsoft Outlook 2003.
@MrGroove - Hello. Great news! I actually recovered the email using the .PST file. I’m using 2007. A friend told me to locate the .PST file, then in the file, under its properties (maybe advanced properties), restore it to a date before the email was deleted. I did this and then:
• Back to Outlook, File, Import and Export, “Outlook…”
• Import from another program or file.
• Under Select file type: scroll down to “Personal File Folder (.PST).
• Navigate to the .PST file that was restored. I believe I dragged and dropped 3 different .PST dates into a folder on my desktop.
• Pick the file closest to your deletion date/time.
• Let Outlook restore the PST file. It’ll ask you where you want to restore it to. I picked what seemed like a default: Personal Folders with the option to skip duplicates.
• Let Outlook load old email and personal info.
Done! All email should be restored.
groovypost rocks – Thanks for all of your help MrGrove.
@Ravi - Hey that’s great news! Thanks for the great email reply! You must be using Windows Vista?
That’s one great thing about Windows Vista is the “Previous Versions” feature. Really glad the process worked for you! I’ll have to turn it into a groovyPost article now (with credit back to you of course)
I nuked everything in my inbox with shift-delete. Almost lost it until I found this article. Thank you.
One of my users… in finance… deleted their entire INBOX… with this great post I was able to get it all back for them in about 5 minutes AFTER my boss told them that recovering the mail was impossible.
Thanks for making me look great!