How to Restore Outlook Emails: A Step-by-step Guide

Article Summary:

This guide provides a detailed, step-by-step process for recovering deleted Outlook emails, whether they’re in the Deleted Items folder, the Recoverable Items folder, or require admin-level intervention. It also covers advanced backup strategies using Microsoft 365 Backup and third-party tools like SpinBackup.

Restore Outlook Emails Key insights:

• Three stages of deletion: Emails can reside in the Deleted Items folder (first-stage), Recoverable Items folder (second-stage), or be permanently deleted after retention periods.
• Retention period limits: The default retention for recoverable items is 14 days (extendable to 30 days by admins).
• Admin assistance: If emails aren’t recoverable via Outlook, admins can try restoring them via Exchange Admin Center or Microsoft Purview eDiscovery.
• Backup limitations: Native Microsoft 365 Backup is helpful but limited; third-party solutions provide additional protection.
• Third-party backup advantage: Solutions like SpinBackup offer automated backups, enhanced security, and reliable restoration, reducing the risk of permanent data loss.

Is Microsoft Outlook the lifeblood of your professional avatar?

Then this hypothetical situation might strike a chord with you:

You are an Account Executive for “MCR Corp” and it’s your job to convert prospects into clients. For several months, you’ve been wooing Alp Inc. to get them to choose MCR Corp as the service provider for a lucrative 3-year project.

Last week, Ms. LMI, a Senior Account Manager at Alp Inc. confirmed that they want to sign up with MCR Corp. She also sent you a signed contract via email. The contract outlines the payment terms, the project scope of work, and other crucial details.

Unfortunately, you mistakenly deleted that email. Now you’re panicking because without the contract, you have no official proof of the agreement between MCR Corp and Alp Inc. There’s also a very real risk of losing the opportunity to a rival firm and of damaging the business relationship between MCR Corp and Alp Inc.

Needless to say, you need to salvage this situation. And to do this, you need to recover that precious email.

But how?

Is it even possible to restore Outlook emails once they’ve already been deleted?

This guide explains!

Types of Deleted Emails

When it comes to Outlook, there are three types of “deleted emails”. It’s important to understand these types because this understanding will guide your strategy to restore deleted Outlook emails.

1. Emails in the Deleted Items Folder

In Outlook, the Deleted Items folder is like a “first-stage recycle bin”. It temporarily holds all deleted emails (as well as deleted calendar appointments, contacts, and tasks) before they are permanently deleted. So, if you accidently delete an email from Alp Inc. or anyone else, don’t panic! Look in this folder first.

But what if you’ve already emptied the folder and the contract email from Ms. LMI is no longer here. What should you do?

While it’s true that the deleted item will disappear from the Deleted Items folder, you can still restore it. Here’s where the Recoverable Items folder comes in.

2. Emails in the Recoverable Items Folder

In Outlook, the Recoverable Items folder is the “second-stage recycle bin”. So, any items that you removed from the Deleted Items folder – either by using the Delete action, the Shift+Delete action, or the Empty Deleted Items Folder action – will automatically move to this folder.

A word of caution though – deleted items will not remain here forever. The duration that any deleted items will remain in this folder depends on the deleted item retention settings.

In Outlook, the default retention period for the Recoverable Items folder is 14 days. However, admins can change it to 30 days. This means that you can recover the email from this folder if its retention period has not yet elapsed.

3. Permanently Deleted Emails

An email is permanently deleted if you deleted it after the deleted item retention period has elapsed. So, whether your company’s retention period is 14 days or 30 days, if you deleted an email after the period, it’s likely to be permanently gone. If you deleted it before the period elapses, you may be able to restore it.

How to Restore Outlook Emails from the Deleted Items Folder

This section will show you how to restore Outlook emails from the Deleted Items folder in both New Outlook and Old Outlook.

How to Restore Deleted Outlook Emails from the Deleted Items Folder in New Outlook

1. Open Outlook.
2. Select the Deleted Items folder.
3. If you can’t see the folder – this can happen when it’s hidden – select the Show Navigation Pane icon.

4. Hover over the deleted item you want to recover and select the checkbox next to it.
5. Next, go to the Home tab in the top ribbon and select Move.
6. Select Move to a different folder.

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7. From the full folder list, choose your preferred location. This can be your Inbox or some other folder. We recommend creating separate folders by clients or projects – or choose your own criteria.
8. You can also right-click a message and select Restore.

How to Restore Deleted Outlook Emails from the Deleted Items Folder in Classic Outlook

1. Select the Deleted Items folder.
2. Select the email that you want to recover and restore.
3. Select and hold (or right-click) that message and select Move from the Home tab in the top ribbon.
4. Now select the folder (from the list) to place the recovered item.
5. Or select Other folder and choose a location from the folder list.

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How to Restore Outlook Emails from the Recoverable Items Folder

If you can’t find a deleted item in the Deleted Itemsfolder, it’s most likely to be in the Recoverable Itemsfolder. As long as the retention period for this folder has not elapsed (14 days by default, but admins can extend it to 30 days), you can restore Outlook emails from here.

How to Restore Deleted Emails from the Recoverable Items Folder in New Outlook

1. Select the Deleted Items folder.
2. Select Recover items deleted from this folder.

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3. Hover over the deleted email that you want to recover.
4. Check the checkbox next to it.
5. From the Home tab, select Restore.

How to Restore Deleted Emails from the Recoverable Items Folder in Classic Outlook

1. Open Outlook and select Folder in the top ribbon.
2. Select Recover deleted Items.

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3. You will now see an active list of all deleted items.

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4. You can sort the list by subject, deleted data, received date, sent to, or from.
5. Since you know that the deleted email came from Ms. LMI, we recommend sorting by the From column.

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6. Now, select that email and click OK. Don’t forget to select Restore Selected Items.

7. The email will move to its original folder.
8. You can locate it by scrolling in the folder or by using Outlook’s search box.

How Admins can Recover Deleted Outlook Emails

If you can’t find the deleted email in the Deleted Items or Recoverable Items folders, contact your company’s Outlook administrator. They might be able to restore the item using one of these methods.

1. From the Exchange Admin Center (EAC)

EAC is a web-based management console in Exchange Server. Outlook admins use EAC to easily manage email mailboxes and to configure mail flow rules. They can also recover deleted emails in a user’s mailbox from EAC, if the deleted item retention period has not yet expired.

2. Using Microsoft Purview eDiscovery

Admins can also restore Outlook emails through the eDiscovery Center in Microsoft Purview. This unified platform includes a portal with a Content search eDiscovery tool that admins can use to recover deleted emails. First, they need to run a search for your email. Then they can export the search results as an individual message to their local computer and send it on to you.

If the admin also can’t restore your deleted email, it’s likely lost forever.

Some common scenarios where it’s usually impossible to restore deleted emails:

• If the retention period has already elapsed
• If admin has deleted a user’s account
• If the email no longer resides on the Exchange Server

How to Restore Outlook Emails from Outlook Archive

Archived emails are not deleted emails, so you won’t find them in the Deleted Items or Recoverable Items folders. They’re also not in your inbox but in a separate Archive folder. You can move any emails to this folder to de-clutter your Inbox, safeguard important messages, and to make them easy to find.

Here’s how to restore Outlook emails from the Archive folder:

1. Open Outlook and click on the Archive folder in the left navigation. It will be a sub-folder under the Deleted Items folder.

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2. On the right, you will see all the emails you have previously archived.
3. Find the email you want to restore and right-click on it.
4. Under Move, select Inbox.

5. You can also drag the email to the Inbox.
6. To restore multiple emails from the Archive, select them and go to Step 5 or Step 6.

Advanced Recovery Options: Microsoft 365 Backup vs. Third-party Backup

As we have seen, the process to recover and restore Outlook emails from inside Outlook is fairly simple, whether you do it yourself or get an admin to help.

However, there are many limitations to these methods.

For one, there’s a time limit to restorations.

As previously mentioned, the Recoverable Items folder will hold deleted emails for only 14 days from the date of deletion (unless the admin has changed the retention period to 30 days). Once this period elapses, recovery is difficult, and sometimes impossible.

Another problem is quotas. Outlook has a storage quota of 100 GB. This is the maximum amount of space available for emails, contacts, and calendar items. Outlook accounts also have a warning quota of 20 GB. Once a mailbox folder reaches this quota and the retention period for deleted items expires, Outlook’s Managed Folder Assistant will automatically purge items from the Recoverable Items folder on a first in, first out (FIFO) basis. This may lead to data losses. You can imagine its impact on your new client relationship, new project, and your company’s reputation and financial position.

Even EAC and Microsoft Purview eDiscovery cannot always guarantee recovery of all deleted emails.

For all these reasons, it’s never a good idea to rely solely on Outlook for email restoration. A more reliable way to restore Outlook emails and minimize data losses is to take data backups. Here, you have two options:

1. Native Backup with Microsoft 365 Backup

Microsoft 365 Backup is Microsoft’s native tool for backing up and recovering Exchange data. It can backup and restore individual mailbox items as well as deleted items. All in all, Microsoft 365 Backup is a good backup solution. However, it’s not sufficient for dependable, continuous data protection.

Microsoft follows a shared responsibility model for data security, so companies are responsible for safeguarding their data residing on Microsoft 365 services. So, if there’s a ransomware attack or insider threat to data, there’s very little that Microsoft can do to prevent losses. This is why Microsoft 365 Backup is not a 100% failsafe data protection solution.

To effectively safeguard your data, you need to host your backup data with a different company from the company that hosts your primary data (in this case, Microsoft). And the easiest way to do this is with a 3^rd party backup solution.

2. Easy, Reliable, Third-Party Email Recovery with SpinBackup

The good news is that you don’t have to!

A third-party data backup and recovery solution can save your Outlook emails from being lost. The key is to select a solution that provides unlimited automated daily backups, secure data storage, and lightning-fast recovery.

Try SpinBackup.

SpinBackup is a cloud-to-cloud backup solution that guarantees the security of your Outlook accounts and email. You get powerful automated 1x/3x a day backup to a cloud of your choice (AWS, Azure, GCP, and more). This ensures a way to reliably restore Outlook emails as you need them.

Want to store data in an encrypted and compliant form?

Easily identify and recover lost data?

Track changes to data?

With SpinBackup, you can do all this and more.

SpinBackup is optimized to protect your data for many different use cases, including data leak prevention, data loss prevention, insider threats, shadow IT, and ransomware downtime.

Want to see its superior features, flexibility, and security in action? Click here to request a free demo.

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