Overview

By doing any one of the following things, you will delete the emails in Outlook in a permanent way. Or, you may call it a "hard deleted".

  • Empty the "Deleted Items" folder for good.
  • Archive old emails using the settings "Clean out items folder older than xx months".
  • Use shift + delete keys to delete the selected email files, folders or subfolders.

Workable Solutions Step-by-step Troubleshooting
Method 1. Recover in Outlook Trash Log in Outlook > Click "Deleted Items" > Click "Recover Deleted Items from Server"...Full steps
Method 2. Recover with Outlook Recovery Software Download Outlook recover software > Choose a location to scan > Select emails to recover...Full steps

After those operations, can you recover permanently deleted emails in Outlook? The answer is YES. There are two exclusive solutions to make you through. One is recovering deleted emails in Outlook from the Deleted Items folder, and the other is using EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard, EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard to recover permanently deleted Outlook emails on the local drive.

How to Recover Deleted Emails in Outlook 2018/2016/2013

When you permanently delete items from Outlook, in fact, you didn't really lose this data. Microsoft Outlook still keeps these emails in somewhere else. They are just hidden from normal, for at least a few weeks or even much longer. So you have the chance to recover permanently delete emails in Outlook. Follow the detailed instructions below.

Step 1. Log in to your Microsoft Outlook account, go to the email folder list and click "Deleted Items".

Note: If you don't see the Deleted Items folder, but instead see the Trash folder, then your account doesn't allow you to recover an item that's no longer in the Deleted Items folder.

Step 2. Go to the Home screen, and then click "Recover Deleted Items From Server".

Note: If Recover Deleted Items From Server isn't there, your account doesn't support recovering an item that's no longer in your Deleted Items folder.

recover deleted emails in Outlook

Step 3. Then, Microsoft will recover permanently deleted emails from their exchange server and list them for you. Select the item you want to recover, click "Restore Selected Items" and then click "OK".

recover deleted emails in Outlook

Step 4. When you recover deleted emails from the Recoverable Items folder, they are moved to the Deleted Items folder. You can find them there and then move it to Inbox or another folder.

How to Recover Permanently Deleted Outlook Emails with Email Recovery Software

There are two types of Outlook data files used by Outlook, .pst and .ost. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard supports both PST file recovery and OST file recovery. By locating the files of the mentioned formats in the scan results, you can quickly restore the emails that you've deleted on a local drive; even the PST/OST files are permanently gone.

Apart from the email recovery, EaseUS data recovery tool is also good at photo recovery, video and audio recovery, Word document recovery (as well as Excel & PPT), as well as other files restoring caused by accidental deletion, hard drive damage/formatting, OS crash, or virus attack.

 Download for Win Recovery Rate 99.7%
 Download for Mac Trustpilot Rating 4.8

Step 1. Choose the drive or partition where you lost email files, and click "Search for Lost Data".

select a location and click scan

Step 2. The software will initiate a scanning process immediately. Wait patiently until the scanning process completes. To quickly locate the email files, click "Emails" in the left panel. Then, look for PST files or Outlook files in the file type list.

scan lost emails

Step 3. Then, choose the desired email files and click "Recover". Save the files to another location instead of the original one. It is also advised to save your files to cloud storage to better avoid data loss.

recover lost emails

Import PST/OST files into Outlook 

To retrieve your email to Outlook, do as the following steps.

1. Start Outlook. Go to "File" > "Open & Export" > "Import/Export" > "Import from another program or file" > "Open Outlook Data File". 

2. In the navigation pane, drag and drop the emails, contacts, other folders from .pst file to your existing Outlook folders.

recover deleted Outlook emails

Was This Page Helpful?

Updated by Cedric

Cedric Grantham is a senior editor and data recovery specialist of EaseUS. He mainly writes articles and how-to tips about data recovery on PC and Mac. He has handled 10,000+ data recovery cases and is good at data recovery of NTFS, FAT (FAT32 and ExFAT) file systems, and RAID structure reorganization.

Read full bio

Written by Jean

Jean is recognized as one of the most professional writers in EaseUS. She has kept improving her writing skills over the past 10 years and helped millions of her readers solve their tech problems on PC, Mac, and iOS devices.

Read full bio