We are all aware of MS Outlook – the de-facto email client for Windows. In a competitive market having a variety of free and commercial desktop email applications, Outlook has made a name for itself as the most sophisticated app with an intuitive interface. It excels in all the major aspects of email management. But ultimately, it’s just a software and cannot control user’s actions. So if the user deletes some messages from Outlook that later were found to be important, it seems to be a big hurdle to cross. To resolve this mistake, we came up with a few methods that can help users retrieve deleted emails from Outlook.
Outlook provides a way to retrieve recently deleted emails from PST file as it keeps them in a mailbox folder for a certain period of time. However, for permanently deleted messages, one may have to use automated solution for Outlook email recovery or restore the mail from server, if that option is available.
“Greetings! Can I restore deleted message in Outlook 2016? I deleted some emails earlier this month that turned out be really important. I must find a way to restore them within a week but don’t know the method to do so. If anybody has any ideas regarding this, please share.”
“Hello! I am facing what seems to be a really uphill task. I needed to sort out some emails to make a report. However, I was unable to find them. Now, I have been told that my daughter, by mistake, deleted some emails in the past that could very well be what I am looking for. These messages are very important for me. It will be very helpful if someone can solve my problem.”
Methods to Retrieve Deleted Emails from Outlook
There are three different ways to retrieve deleted Outlook emails. The first one is for recovery of recently deleted emails, the second one is to restore permanently deleted message, while the third method can retrieve Outlook emails irrespective of its deletion period (recently or permanently).
#1. Deleted Items Folder or Trash
The most obvious place to look for a deleted message is the Deleted Items folder. It may also be present as the Trash folder. This mailbox stores all the emails that are deleted in Outlook for a certain period of time. To recover deleted email from Outlook, use the following steps:
- Launch Outlook and click on Deleted Items or Trash folder (whichever is present).
- Find and select the message that you want to recover.
- Right-click on the message and select Move, then select Other folder.
- Now, select the Inbox folder to move the message and click Ok.
Note: If the entire folder was deleted, it will appear as a subfolder in the Deleted Items mailbox. Although the method to retrieve it remains the same.
#2. Hidden Recoverable Items folder
If the message is not present in the Deleted Items folder, users can look for them in Recoverable Items folder. This hidden mailbox stores the email messages further deleted from the Deleted Items folder. The steps for deleted message retrieval are as follows:
- In Outlook, click on the Folder tab from the ribbon bar.
- Now, click on Recover deleted items.
- In the window that appears, select the email messages that needs to be retrieved.
- Click on the Recover Selected Items to move the selected messages into the Deleted Items folder.
- Then repeat the step given in the first method to recover the emails.
Note: If Recoverable Items folder is not present in Outlook, then unfortunately, user email account does not support retrieval of emails that are no longer in the Deleted Items folder.
#3. Automated Solution
Emaildoctor Outlook Recovery program is an easy and reliable method to retrieve deleted emails from Outlook PST file. It is capable of restoring user email messages with or without Outlook just by scanning the PST file. It makes little difference if the emails are deleted permanently or not, the tool easily recovers all the messages. This tool even highlights the deleted emails and previews them after scanning the file. This program even works in situations where the problem of emails missing is caused by damage to the Outlook data file. It is capable of repairing and retrieving all Outlook items including email messages, contacts, calendars, etc.
Conclusion
In this article, we demonstrated both the manual and automated solution to retrieve deleted emails from Outlook. In many cases, manual method is unable to recover emails which leads to the requirement of an automated solution. Fortunately, the demo version of automated solution is available for free. Thus, before deciding, users can scan and preview all the email messages in the automated solution to ensure that the emails they are looking for are present.
