How to purge deleted items automatically in Outlook?

The Deleted Items folder is a place where you can keep your unwanted emails, before deleting them forever. It makes your Inbox and other folders clean.

Keeping the items in the Deleted Items folder also helps you restore your email, which you have accidentally deleted. But the problem is that the space in the Deleted Items folder is very low; so, you must clean your Deleted Items folder.

Here we are going to discuss how to purge deleted messages in MS Outlook. Let’s discuss the manual procedure.

Manual procedure to empty deleted items folder

It is the most straightforward process to delete your emails from the Deleted Items folder; follow the given procedure below-

1 Open the MS Outlook application on your PC.

2 Select the Deleted Items folder and right-click on it. Click on the Empty Folder option to delete all emails.

Note: A message popup appears, which asks permission to delete items permanently.

3 Click on Yes to delete items permanently.

To delete items selectively from the “Deleted Items” folder or any other folders, a few more techniques are available:

Option 1

1 Open MS Outlook, select the folder from which you want to delete emails, and go to the Folder option.

Note: Here, we have selected the Deleted Items folder

2 In the Clean Up Folder section, select Purge.

3 Now click on Purge marked items in “Deleted Items.”

Option 2

1 In the MS Outlook application, go to the File menu, and select Options.

2 Now select the Customize Ribbon option.

3 Now create a new group and name it (use the New Group button).

4 In the Command Section, select All Commands.

5 Scroll down to the Purge command section. Select the Purge commands and add them. Click OK.

6 A “purge marked items” option gets added to the ribbon.

7 Now select the mail from any folder and click on this button, and your mail will be deleted permanently.

In the above process, you need to empty your deleted items folder from time to time, which is always a hectic process. Here we have another method, which automatically purges the Deleted Items folder.

Procedure to purge deleted message automatically

Follow the step by step procedure to purge deleted items folder automatically:

1 Open MS Outlook 2019/2016/2013 on your desktop

2 Click File > Options.

3 Now click on the Advanced tab in the Outlook Options.

4 In Outlook Start and Exit section, tick on “Empty Deleted Items folder when exiting Outlook” and click on OK.

Note: To get an alert message before deleting your items, in the Advanced tab, go to the Other section, and tick on “Prompt for confirmation before permanently deleting items.” Now click on OK.

Now when you exit from the MS Outlook application, a popup message will appear to take your permission to delete the messages from the Deleted Items folder. To delete the messages, click on Yes.

An all-in-one tool for Outlook management

Purging deleted items is one of the requirements of Outlook users, for which there is a simple Outlook feature. But there are many other tasks Outlook users need to perform daily. However, to perform many of these actions, they need professional tools. These tasks include repairing, splitting, or compressing/compacting PST files. Also, they may need to remove duplicate items from Outlook mailboxes.

All these tasks can be performed using a simple Outlook management solution – Kernel Outlook Suite. This is an essential tool for all Outlook users. And this tool supports all Outlook versions and all Windows versions.