How to Stop Outlook Automatically Deleting Emails (2 Ways)

Why Outlook Automatically Deleting Emails?

Recently, many users are discussing about Outlook automatically deleting emails. The email serves as an important work and communication tool. Automatic deletion of your emails by Outlook can lead to loss of important data. To fix this problem, you need to first understand a few common causes that can cause this problem.

• Set the program via the message rules:  With the Outlook rule settings, you can set the app to automatically move specific emails to the Deleted Items folder or some other folder.
• Enabled the Move Conversation feature: It will move the email conversations from one folder to the other. It won’t delete your emails but move specific conversations to the Deleted items folder.
• Activate the Ignore Conversations feature: When activated, the conversations you ignore don’t appear in your inbox. The emails may not get deleted but go to the Junk folder.
• Corrupt and oversize PST files:  A corrupt PST file is subject to malfunctioning. On the other hand, Outlook can automatically delete some emails to free up space if your PST file is too large.

How to Stop Outlook Automatically Deleting Emails

No matter why your Outlook program is deleting your mail, you can use any of the methods below to fix the problem. Next, the article will introduce two methods in turn to prevent Outlook from automatically deleting items in the Delete Items folder or any specified folder in Outlook. Each method includes a detailed graphic tutorial. Read on for more details.

Method 1. Stop Outlook from Auto-deleting Emails in Deleted Items Folder

This method will guide you to stop Outlook from auto-deleting items in the Deleted Items folder when exiting Outlook. Please do as follows.

Step 1. Click File > Options.

Step 2. In the Outlook Options dialog box, please click Advanced in the left bar, and then uncheck the Empty Deleted Items folders when exiting Outlook option in the Outlook start and exit section. See screenshot.

Step 3. Click the OK button to save the change.

From now on, the Deleted Items folder won’t be cleared automatically when exiting Outlook program.

Method 2. Stop Outlook from Auto-deleting Emails in Specified Folder

If items are removed automatically from a certain Outlook folder in a regular period, such as appointments and meetings are deleted automatically every month, it may be caused by AutoArchive. In this condition, please go ahead with below steps:

Step 1. Right click the specified Outlook folder, and click Properties from the right-clicking menu. See screenshot.

Step 2. In the opening Properties dialog box, please enable the AutoArchive tab, and check the Do not archive items in this folder option. See screenshot.

Step 3. Click the OK button to save the change.

Since now, the older items in the specified folder won’t be deleted automatically.

Note: This method works well for mail folders, calendar folders, and task folder as well.

How to Prevent Data Loss from Outlook Automatically Deleting Emails

After solving this problem after problem. In order to prevent data loss from such a situation in the future, you can regularly back up your Outlook emails. That way, if anything goes wrong, you can use this email backup to restore it. AOMEI Backupper Professional, as a professional backup software, provides many useful functions to keep your Outlook data safe.

• 3 backup methods: It provides full backup, incremental backup and differential backup, the latter two methods can help you save backup time and disk space, thereby improving backup efficiency.
• Schedule Backup: It can automatically run Outlook email backup at daily, weekly, monthly intervals according to your settings.
• Multiple Backup Destination Paths: You can backup Outlook to external hard drive, USB drive, network or NAS device, cloud drive, etc.
• Different Windows Operating Systems: It is compatible with all Windows PC operating systems, including Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7/XP/Vista.

You can download and install this professional backup software, and then start backing up Outlook according to the graphic tutorial below. If you are a Windows Server user, you can choose the AOMEI Backupper Server version.

Step 1. Open Outlook, type email and click Connect, then follow the on-screen instructions to add the Outlook account.

Step 2. Open AOMEI Backupper Professional. In the main interface, click Backup > Outlook Backup.

Step 3. Click Add Outlook data and select the Outlook folder you want to backup. Then click OK.

Step 4. Then click the box below to select the backup destination. It can be a local path, network or NAS location, or cloud drive to store your Outlook emails.

Schedule Backup: You can set different  backup frequencies, like“Daily”, “Weekly” or “Monthly” . Make sure the option “Wake the computer to run scheduled task” is selected.

Backup Scheme:  You can Enable Automatic Backup Cleanup to delete old backups regularly. This feature can solve the storage full issues.

Step 5. Click Start Backup to backup Outlook automatically

Summary

This article discusses the issue of Outlook automatically deleting emails and provides two solutions to stop it. It also recommends using AOMEI Backupper Professional to regularly backup Outlook data for long-term data security. In this way, even if there is any problem, you can use this email backup to restore it.

This backup software offers a variety of features, such as the ability to backup any items within Outlook, different backup methods, and more. You can download it now and start trying this great backup software.