How to Recover Deleted Outlook Account?

Sometimes users delete their Outlook account and a few days later they look for ways to recover deleted Outlook account. But is it possible to do so? Does Microsoft allow you to get back the account you deleted manually with consent? Yes, you can restore your Outlook account.

Be it a personal, work, or school account, restoring a deleted Outlook account is possible if the retention period has not expired (generally 30 to 60 days). In this article, we will walk you through the steps to recover Outlook email account that was deleted mistakenly or intentionally. But first, let’s discuss the common reasons why someone may want to recover a deleted account in Microsoft Outlook.

Why Recover Deleted Outlook Account?

You may want to restore your Outlook account for multiple reasons, and the most common ones are:

• The deleted Microsoft Outlook account is linked to your primary email account as a recovery account.
• The account was deleted automatically by Microsoft due to inactivity for more than 2 years and now you want to recover it.
• You forgot to take an Outlook email backup before deleting the account and now want to recover it to complete the backup.
• The account was used earlier to sign into a cloud platform (like AWS), and without the active email address, you cannot access the cloud platform.
• Regain access to the OneDrive account that was associated with the deleted Outlook account.

Things to Do to Restore Outlook Account

Before starting the deleted Outlook account recovery, make sure you have taken care of the following points:

• Know the exact email address (not an alias) and the last working password of the deleted account.
• Gather personal details, like present address, date of birth, phone number, etc.; Microsoft may ask for it.
• Access to the email address or the phone number that was assigned to the deleted email for recovery purposes.
• If you are using the Microsoft Authenticator application to get security or login codes, make sure the Authenticator application is still available.

Once you have taken care of the above requirements, you can start the Outlook account recovery process. In addition to the above points, try to perform the recovery steps from the same system on which you previously used the deleted email address. Also, if possible, use the same network as well.

How to Recover a Deleted Personal Outlook Account

If the retention period has not expired since you deleted your Outlook account, then there is a chance that you might get back to your account safely. Usually, the retention period ranges from 30 to 60 days. If you log into your account during this period, all data will be recovered. But if the retention period expires, your account might be deleted permanently.

Follow these steps to restore your personal Outlook account that you deleted previously or accidentally:

• Go to the Microsoft account login page and sign in using the credentials of the account you want to recover.
• If the grace period has not expired, Microsoft will inform you that the account is scheduled for closure and will also give you an option to cancel the deletion.
• Choose to reopen the account by cancelling the deletion request.
• Microsoft will ask you for the recovery phone number, email address, or the authenticator app for verification. Choose as per the requirement and complete the recovery process.
• Once your identity is confirmed, your account will be restored.

If the grace period has expired, Microsoft will say no such email address exists. In this case, it is impossible to recover deleted Outlook account.

Note: Recovery is not possible for an account that was deleted by Microsoft due to inactivity.

How to Recover a Deleted Work or School Account

If you are an employee or student whose Outlook account is deleted, you cannot recover it from your end. Only your organization's administrator can recover a work/school account using the Exchange Admin Center. So, ask your administrator to recover your account.

A deleted work/school account can only be recovered within the 30-day retention period. After the retention period is over, the account is permanently purged from Microsoft's servers and recovery becomes impossible.

What If You Cannot Recover Your Outlook Account?

If the retention period is over, your account is permanently removed from all Microsoft servers. There is no way to get back the email address and the OneDrive storage in this case. Even contacting Microsoft support will not help you.

If you were trying to restore Outlook account to regain access to the old emails, attachments, or an important contact, you might still be able to do that. If you had backed up the mailbox to PST before deletion, you can import that PST file in Outlook.

This will not reactivate the deleted, old email address. But it will give you access to your previous mailbox data items. The backup.pst file must be healthy. If the file structure of the PST file is damaged or the file is corrupted, Outlook will fail to import it correctly. In this case, repair the PST file using the SCANPST.EXE tool.

The SCANPST.EXE can fix minor structural issues in the PST but cannot repair severely damaged files. If SCANPST.EXE fails, use a professional PST repair tool like Kernel for Outlook PST Repair. The tool does not have a PST file size limit and supports recovering emails, attachments, contacts, calendar, folders, etc., data items from the corrupt PST file. It also offers a trial version to test the tool for free.

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Tips for Preventing Accidental Outlook Account Deletion

Here are some tips to prevent account deletion in Outlook based on Microsoft documentation and user experiences:

• Make sure you log into your account on a regular basis to avoid permanent account deletion due to inactivity.
• Use a strong password and two-factor authentication to prevent unauthorized access to your account.
• Double-check the email address before deleting it. Sometimes, when using multiple and almost identical Outlook accounts in the same browser, the user may delete the wrong account in a hurry.

Conclusion

We discussed the steps to restore deleted Outlook account (personal, work, or school). Remember, you can only restore your Outlook account within the retention period. Once the retention period is over, there is no way to get the account back.

However, you can still restore Outlook account data by accessing the backup.pst file of the deleted account. In case the PST file is inaccessible or does not display emails/folder after importing into Outlook, it may be corrupt and will require repairs. To fix the corrupt PST file, use SCANPST.EXE. If it fails, use the Kernel for Outlook PST Repair tool for complete Outlook PST recovery.