How To Recover Deleted Hotmail Emails
Microsoft has implemented two fail safe mechanisms when it comes to deleting emails in Hotmail. Emails that you delete in Microsoft's email service are first moved to the deleted folder. This is similar to the way files are deleted in Windows. The idea here is to give you an option to recover emails that you may have accidentally deleted, or emails that you have deleted but need to access at a later point in time again.
A click on deleted in the sidebar displays all email messages that you have deleted in Hotmail and not yet removed from that folder.
Recover Deleted Hotmail Emails
You can recover emails in the deleted emails folder by dragging and dropping them into another folder. It is important to check all emails that you want to move from the deleted folder into another one if you want to move more than one email from the folder. While you could move all emails individually, it is usually more convenient to mark all emails and move them at once.
Emails that you delete in Hotmail's deleted folder are not necessarily deleted permanently. This may come as a surprise to Hotmail users who thought that deleted emails would as a result be unrecoverable.
When you look at the bottom of the screen, you will notice the following message there:
Lost a message? When you recover deleted messages, we bring back as many as we can. Learn More.
The recover deleted messages sends a command to Hotmail to recover as many deleted emails as possible. While you do not get a guarantee that emails can be recovered, it can mean that you or someone else can recover emails that you thought were deleted permanently. As with all things tech, this can be used for good and bad purposes.
Microsoft does not reveal much about the process. The company fails to state the criteria (e.g. time, space or other constraints) that it uses to recover previously deleted emails.
The help page notes that the deleted folder gets cleaned up regularly, and that the option has been primarily been designed to give users an option to recover emails after hacking attacks (as hackers may delete all messages of an account).
There is however an option to stop Hotmail from offering to recover deleted messages. Click on the Options link in the upper right corner of the screen, and selected More Options from the context menu.
Click on advanced privacy settings under customizing Hotmail, and switch from let me recover deleted messages to don't let me recover deleted messages - once they leave the Deleted folder, don't give me a link to get them back under deleted messages here.
Click the Save button in the end to save the new preference. Emails that you delete in the deleted folder from that moment on, can't be recovered anymore.
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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!