Preparing for Email Sweeps

Emails in your Outlook Inbox and Sent Item folders that are dated from June 30, 2017, or older will be automatically moved to the Deleted folder. Once an email has been swept to the Deleted folder, there is a 30-day window to recover it. 

Default Outlook folders, including subfolders you've created subfolders within the Inbox or Sent Items folders, will not be swept. 

There are three suggested ways to prevent the loss of important emails. These techniques are available to organize and keep important emails from being deleted. 

Three Ways to Back Up Emails

Create Subfolders Within Your Outlook Inbox and Sent folders

Create a Folder

  1. Right-click Inbox and select New Folder.
  2. Type a name for the folder and press Enter.

Move Messages Into a Folder

  1. Select an email message.
  2. Drag and drop it into a folder.

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Auto-Archive Emails With an Outlook Rule

  1. Click File > Options > Advanced.
  2. Under AutoArchive, click AutoArchive Settings.
  3. Click the Run AutoArchive every n days box and specify how often to run AutoArchive.
  4. Choose any other options you want, such as having Outlook delete old items instead of archiving them.

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Use the Outlook Clean Up Conversation Tool

Use Clean Up Conversation to tidy up your email conversations and reduce the number of messages in your inbox.

  1. Select an email conversation that you'd like to clean up.
  2. Select the arrow next to Delete > Clean Up Conversation. You can also clean up entire Folders. 
  3. If prompted, confirm by selecting Clean Up.

Once you have selected Clean Up, the emails are sent to the Deleted Items folder. 

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