Force Outlook To Delete Mails Completely
If you are using the email client Microsoft Outlook you might have noticed that mails that you deleted earlier were still available in the Outlook pst files on the computer's hard drive. Those pst files can be opened with a special viewer for that file types or with a hex editor. When an email gets deleted in Microsoft Outlook it will only be removed from the program's interface but will stay in the associated pst file.
Only compressing the folders will delete that email permanently from the computer system. That's great if you deleted an email by accident and want to recover it but bad if an unauthorized third party tries to read your emails.
Microsoft Outlook provides the means to compress a folder immediately but no option to automate the task. It will however display a popup every 100th time that Outlook got closed asking if the user wants to compress the folders.
A far better solution to force Outlook to delete deleted mails completely at every shutdown is to change a setting in the Windows Registry.
Open the Windows Registry by pressing [Windows R], typing [regedit] and hitting [enter]. Navigate to the following Registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office
The next step depends on the version of Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft Office that is installed on the computer. When in doubt perform the operation for all of the following subkeys.
Find the 9.0, 10.0, 11.0 or 12.0 keys in that folder. Click in the Outlook subkey and locate the key PST. If PST is not existing create it. A full Registry path to the right location could look like this:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\PST\
Only the 12.0 can change in the path. If you are in the PST key right-click in the right pane and select New > DWord.
Name the Dword PSTNullFreeOnClose. Double-click it afterwards and give it the value 1 to enable it. This ensures that Microsoft Outlook will remove deleted mails completely on every exit from the computer system.
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You said that Outlook isn’t your main email client, so which is your main one?
I think its thunderbird
It is Mozilla Thunderbird.
Awesome! This actually solved my problem… what a stupid bug.
If this is the same bug that I’ve encountered, there may be another fix: (1) hover over open Outlook item in Taskbar, cursor up to hover over Outlook window item, and right-click; (2) this should give you Restore / Move / Size / Minimize / Maximize — choose Move or Size; (3) use your cursor keys, going arbitrarily N/S/E/W, to try to move or size the Outlook window back into view. Basically, the app behaves as though it were open in a 0x0 window, or at a location that’s offscreen, and this will frequently work to resize and/or move the window. Don’t forget to close while resized/moved, so that Outlook remembers the size/position for next time.
THANK YOU Claude!!! I could get the main window to launch but could not get any other message window to show on the desktop. You are my hero!!!!
Solved my issue! 6 years later and this is still problem…
Fantastic. Thank you. Size did the trick.
This solved my Outlook problem, too. Thank you. :)
Thank you so much, this started happening to me today and was causing big problems. You are a life saver, I hope I can help you in some way some day.
You are a god – thank you!
thanks a lot…. work like charm.. :-)
Yah…thanks Claude. I’ve been having the same problem and tried all the suggestions…your solution was the answer. It had resized itself to a 0/0 box. Cheers
Excellent post. This had me baffled even trying to accurately describe the problem. This fixed it for me.
Thank you
Thanks a lot for the article. Don’t know why it happenend, don’t know how it got fixed, but it was really annoying and now it works :-)
Thanks a lot. I was facing this issue from past 3 week. I tried everything but no resolution. The issue was happening intermittently and mainly when I was changing the display of screen ( as i use 2 monitors). The only option i had was to do system restore. But thanks to you.
I’ve been tried to sole this problem for 12hours. Your comment about changing the display of screen helped me a lot!! Thanks!!
Thank you…don’t know why this happened but your instructions helped me fix it. Running Windows 10 and office pro 2007
Great tip! Thanks!
Worked for me, too – thank you!!!
It’s Worked for me, too
thank you very much!
I had a similar issue with Outlook 2013 on Windows 10 and this helped me to fix it. Thank you very much!
Thank you so much. Solved!
Considering you published this in 2012, incredible not been debugged by Microsoft.
Thank you again. M
This problem was faced by only one user logging to TS 2008 r2 using outlook 2010.The issue was resolved.
Thanks.
Great tip. Thank you!!!! If it helps, I had to use the Control Key and the arrow keys at the same time to bring my window back into view. Worked like a charm.
Thank you, this worked !!!!
Man, you are a fucking god. Thanks a lot, what an annoying bug!!
Awesome, this post solved the issue. Many thanks!