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That email is now in the “Deleted” state, which simply means it moved to the Deleted Items folder. When you press the Delete key on an email in Outlook, it’s moved to the Deleted Items folder. See Overview of Retention policies for more information.
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Microsoft 365 has hundreds of policies you can tweak to suit your requirements. A policy is an automatically applied action that enforces a rule related to services. Various rules control the retention period for items in the different states of deletion. For this reason, the folder for deleted content is called “ Deleted Items.” Also, when discussing deletions and recovery, it is common to refer to “items” rather than limiting the discussion to just email. For example, you can delete calendar entries and may be called on to recover them, just like email. Outlook is all about email yet also has tasks, contacts, calendar events, and other types of information. Let’s walk through the following graphic and talk about how email gets from one state to another, the default policies, how to recover deleted email in each state, and a few tips along the way. The way you recover email and how long you have to do so depends on the email’s delete status and the applicable retention policy.
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There are few more layers here than you might think! In Microsoft 365, deleted email can be in one of three states: Deleted, Soft-Deleted, or Hard-Deleted. But what do you do when you can’t find the email you want to recover?įirst, let’s look at how email recovery is structured in Microsoft 365. Deleted Email Recovery in Microsoft And Office 365Įmail Recovery for Outlook in Exchange Online through Microsoft and Office can be as simple as dragging and dropping the wayward email from the Deleted Items folder to your Inbox. Sure, you can look in the Deleted Items folder in Outlook, but beyond that, how can you recover what has undergone “permanent” deletion? In this article, we review how you can save the day by bringing supposedly unrecoverable email back from the great beyond.
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When the CEO realizes they deleted a vital email thread three weeks ago, email recovery becomes suddenly becomes an urgent task.
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