Permanently Delete a Message in MS Outlook

• Delete Emails Manually

The most common way to delete messages is to select them one by one or all at once and press Shift + Delete. Outlook will ask you to confirm the action with a pop-up; click on Yes to confirm.

Or

You can select emails, press Shift, and click on the Delete button on the Home tab. Click on Yes to delete the messages permanently.




• Remove the Confirmation Prompt

In this method, we will make some changes in the background so that Outlook won’t ask before deleting messages and it will be easier for you to delete them without any interruption.

1. For this, open Outlook, click on the File > Option, available on the left panel of the screen.
   
   
2. In the new window, select the Advanced tab. Now, under the Other category you will notice that the ‘Prompt for confirmation before permanently deleting items’ is marked; clear that mark and click on OK to save changes.
   

• Empty Deleted Items Folder

Once you delete emails from Outlook with the simple Delete option, they are moved to the Deleted Items folder of the mailbox. To delete those messages permanently, you need to empty that folder too. To perform this, follow below-mentioned steps.

1. Open Outlook and right-click on the Deleted Items folder and select Empty Folder from the menu.
   
2. When prompted for confirmation, click on the Yes button to delete all the emails.
   

Note: Alternately, you can select the Deleted Items folder and then click on the Folder tab. There you will see Empty Folder option, click on the option, and confirm the deletion once again.

• Empty Deleted Items when Exiting Outlook

It may be a hectic task to empty the Deleted Item folder, again and again. To solve this problem, you can change the Outlook settings, so that every time when you exit Outlook, your Deleted Item folder is emptied automatically. To perform this action, follow the below-mentioned steps:

1. Open Outlook and start with clicking on the File > Options available on the left side of the screen.
   
2. Once you click Options, an Outlook Options window will appear; there you need to select Advanced category. In the section Outlook Start and Exit check the box ‘Empty Deleted Items folder when exiting Outlook.’ Click on OK once you are done and the changes will be applied to your Outlook Profile.
   

So, these were few tricks on how you can delete emails permanently from your Outlook Profile. But, sometimes it also happens that while deleting a lot of emails we mistakenly delete the important ones or the ones we are not supposed to delete because they might be of use in future. What to do now? All emails are permanently deleted but we have got your back - read further for the solution.