Restore Deleted Emails in Mac
Didn’t Mean to Delete that Email? Here’s How You Can Possible Get It Back or restore deleted emails in Mac Outlook.
It’s not too rare that we would accidentally delete something that we didn’t mean to. In today’s fast pace world, taking quick decisions than what’s warranted is too frequent and can often lead to frustration. It also happens, if not more frequently, with emails.
This article will let you know how you can get your deleted email back from Outlook 2011 or 2016. If you accidentally or too quickly deleted an email that you want it back, here are a couple of steps you can take and possible restore them.
Trash/Delete Folder of Outlook
The most common way to get your emails back is from “Trash” or “Deleted Emails”.
For IMAP and POP accounts, Outlook creates a folder where the deleted emails are stored for 28 days. When you delete an email, Outlook will automatically move them to this folder, as well as in your web-server database.
However, after 28 days, you will not be able to restore them back as they are permanently deleted.
Also, if you deleted an email using Shift + Delete, they will not be moved to the “Deleted emails” folder and will instead have removed permanently.
Restore Emails not in Delete Folder
If you find yourself in an unfortunate situation where the emails are not even in the deleted folder, you can follow some of these steps below.
Keep in mind that if the emails are deleted permanently, it’s incredibly hard to get them back, but possible.
Try the “Recover Deleted Items” feature:
- For this to work, you need to be connected to your web server. Check at the bottom right of Outlook to see if you are connected properly.
- Go to “Folder” tab from the toolbar above and click on “Recover Deleted Items”
- Outlook will show you the list of all the deleted items that can be restored, along with the date of deletion, email receiving date, and sender and receiver email addresses. Click on the email that you want to restore and click “OK.”
That email will be restored back to its original folder that it belonged to at the time of deletion.
Stop “Purging” to Stop Deleting an Email
Another feature that can occasionally save you from accidentally deleting an email is through Outlook’s feature called “Purging.”
Basically, when you delete an email, Outlook doesn’t delete it instantly nor does it send to the “Trash” folder. It marks the item for deletion and hides it from the user. The marked item is deleted from the server when it is “purged.” The timing for “purge” is set by Outlook configuration that you can change from the settings.
But for now, here’s how to stop an item from getting deleted by recovering it before ‘purging.’
- Click the folder containing the accidentally deleted email.
- Go to ‘View’ tab and click on ‘Change View’ and select “IMAP Messages.” This will show you the items that are presently available on the servers.
- You can see the item that you deleted grayed out, meaning, it will be deleted from the server after a while as set by the “purge” options.
- Right-click on the grayed item (deleted email) and select “Undelete.”
Final advice
you can setup Time Machine to keep back up of Outlook 2011 emails in OLM files. Such a regular setup of backing up data can save you a lot of hassles and crisis of lost data or accidentally delete emails.