Do you want to empty your Deleted Items and Junk Email folders automatically? You can use the ’empty deleted items on exit’ option built into Outlook to empty the Deleted Items folder, but it can slow down the exiting process. It also only works on the Deleted Items folder, not Junk E-mail.

Plus, it’s an all or nothing process – if it’s enabled, it will empty the folder every time you close Outlook. You can’t configure it to only delete items that are older or over a certain size. And if you accidentally delete something you need to keep and close Outlook before retrieving it from the Deleted Items folder, it’s history. It can only be recovered if it was deleted from an Exchange server mailbox and deleted items recovery is enabled.

Fortunately, there are other options. The first, which (almost) any Outlook user can use, is AutoArchive. Set it to run every few days (or even daily) and configure the Deleted Items and Junk Email folder to have items older than 1 day old (or more) deleted.

AutoArchive is disabled for Exchange server mailboxes in Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2007 when archive mailboxes are configured on the Exchange Server.

The second option is used with Exchange server accounts only and is controlled by the Exchange administrator, not the user. The administrator can configure Mailbox Manager to delete items from any folder by age, size, or both, and set exceptions for specific message classes.

Use AutoArchive to delete older Deleted Items and Junk E-mail

Open the AutoArchive dialog by going to Tools, Options, Other, AutoArchive. Enable Run AutoArchive every 14 days. The default is 14 days, but you’ll probably want to lower it to 5 or less days.

You can leave the other settings the default, but remember, if you click the ‘Apply these settings to all folders‘ button, it will apply the settings to all folders, including calendar or any folder you may store old important messages in.

You’ll need to disable AutoArchiving or change the archive period on these folders individually, or raise the archive period (60 months is the maximum) and apply it to all folders, then change the setting on folders you want to archive more often.

Next, right click on the Deleted Items folder and choose Properties, then AutoArchive tab. Choose the option to ‘Archive this folder using these settings‘ and pick a number. My preference is to set AutoArchive to run every 2 to 3 days and delete items older than 2 or 3 days. This provides some insurance, should I need to recover something from either folder.

For Deleted Items and Junk E-mail folders, you’ll want to select the option to permanently delete the items.

If you applied the AutoArchive settings to all folders, you may want to change the setting for the calendar or other folders.

Configure Outlook to Empty Deleted Items on Exit

Because this setting keeps Outlook open until the deleted folder is empty, you want to close Outlook yourself before shutting down your computer. Otherwise, Windows may force Outlook closed, which will cause Outlook to check the data file for inconsistencies the next time you use Outlook.

To avoid problems after deleting a large number of items, empty the Deleted Items folder manually before closing (right click on the folder, choose Empty Deleted items).

When you Empty deleted items on exit, you will not be able to recover accidentally deleted items once you close Outlook. For this reason, I prefer using the AutoArchive method.

In Outlook 2007 and older, go to Tools, Options, Other tab to enable this option.

In Outlook 2010, go to File, Options, Advanced, near the top of the dialog is the option to empty deleted items on exit.