Jason S: How to easily Recover Permanently(shift - delete) Deleted Mails in MS Outlook easily? .: The most Authoritative Technology Blog :.

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

How to easily Recover Permanently(shift - delete) Deleted Mails in MS Outlook easily?

I guess this tip is gonna be really useful to many of you. How many times have you accidentally pressed the shift-delete on an important mail in Outlook and didn't know how to retrieve it back. Well, here's the simple solution to retrieve that important mail again.

Below is the procedure to recover shift deleted [permanently deleted] mails from Microsoft Outlook.

First go to Run and type regedit.
Go to the location: \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\EXCHANGE\CLIENT\OPTIONS registry key.
Right click options and add new DWORD VALUE (data type is REG_DWORD) and then right click and rename to DumpsterAlwaysOn. It is case sensitive.
Then right click and modify and make the value 1 to turn the Recover Deleted Items menu choice on for all folders or enter 0 to turn it off. [I would recomend 1 for now].
Update : When you modify the value, use the "Decimal" option and NOT the "Hexa-Decimal" one. Thanks to William for this finding.
Then go to Outlook , choose "Recover deleted items" option from the Tools Menu to get back your "permanently deleted" mails!

P.S. : This procedure can recover mails which were deleted by pressing shift+del in the past 4 days only.

30 comments:

Unknown said,

Its really works and i able to recover my email which i wrongly deleted.

Thanks & Regards,
TJ

on 6/28/2007 4:09 PM

Jason S said,

Hi TJ,

Nice to know that it helped you.

Cheers!!
Jason

on 6/28/2007 4:11 PM

Anonymous said,

Hi,
This one is good trick...but i am unable to recover my deleted mails..i am using MS-Outlook 2007.can u please shed some light why so?

Thanks,
PK

on 7/02/2007 3:45 PM

Jason S said,

Hi PK,

I haven't yet tried on Outlook 2007. Maybe Microsoft fixed something and so this maynot work in 2007 edition :(

Cheers!!
Jason

on 7/02/2007 4:54 PM

Anonymous said,

OMG THANK YOU!!!!

on 3/26/2008 9:34 PM

Anonymous said,

Hi jason,

I am using MS outook 2003. I test deleting a folder and a mail separately but when I click on recover deleted items, there is nothing there to recover. Can you advise please.

Thanks

HK

on 4/08/2008 11:37 AM

Jason S said,

Hi HK,

Which OS do you use?

It has worked perfectly for me on Win XP with Office 2003 and also Win 2k3 with Office 2007.

Cheers!!!
Jason

on 4/08/2008 11:49 AM

Anonymous said,

Hi frs :)
This is a good tricks but you have to set this option before deleting your mails.
I pressed shift delete(my bad habit) and my all mail box is now empty and I could not retrive those mails by this trick.
Is there any other way?
[I don't think so :( ]

on 5/08/2008 6:08 PM

Prabha said,

Good one!!
it works!!

on 5/15/2008 12:42 PM

Anonymous said,

You just saved my a**! Thank you so much! You're awesome!!
-Jim

on 9/19/2008 2:56 AM

Anonymous said,

Hey !!! thanks , it really works... was dead after i deleted all the important mails.. which cannot miss to :D

what is that DumpsterAlawaysOn :D

on 10/20/2008 1:03 PM

Anonymous said,

Hi,

Thanks so much!!! With these instructions I was able to retrieve my whole inbox (office) which I had deleted by mistake. You just saved my job!!!!!

on 2/20/2009 12:57 PM

Anonymous said,

I believe this will only work for Outlook with Exchange.

on 4/24/2009 4:23 AM

Jason S said,

It has nothing to do with Microsoft Exchange - so it should work for all!!

Cheers!!
Jason

on 4/24/2009 10:54 AM

Christian said,

Thanks! Worked like pro for Microsoft Outlook 2007! I'm using Vista if that makes a difference

on 4/27/2009 8:04 PM

Anonymous said,

Hello Jason,

Thanks! It worked perfectly.

As a clarification point please specify that the value 1 is Decimal.
When I tried the hexadecimal (default in the menu) it did not work.

Thanks and Regards
William

on 7/10/2009 5:37 AM

Anonymous said,

Jason- Thanks for the tip. does this reg hack have to be done from the computer on-which the mail was deleted? or can I make this change on any computer and access the mailbox? I am in an Outlook/Exchange environment.
Thanks.

on 7/17/2009 6:08 AM

Anonymous said,

Worked perfectly. Thank you!

on 10/04/2009 9:40 PM

Anonymous said,

Excellant, It savees me.

Thanks!

Regards,
Dinesh

on 10/26/2009 9:14 PM

Anonymous said,

Thank you very much!

on 11/26/2009 5:48 PM

Mahendhran.mm said,

thank u thank u thank u thank u thank u thank u so much for the effort for this which you published.

on 12/04/2009 12:56 PM

Anonymous said,

Actually, the deleted item retention time has everything to do with exchange, so the availability of items to recover depends on what that time is set to by the exchange admins. Depending on storage available, some environments keep 30 days, 7 days, etc.

on 12/11/2009 11:23 PM

Sam said,

Thank you Buddy. Though it took time, but it got me saved by recovering an email which i had deleted after i had accidentally sent to some-one. Nice that i could recall & replace the message and resend.

Thanks.

on 1/17/2010 12:08 PM

xyz123 said,

Hi Jason,
Will this also work for Microsoft office 2000/2003 docs. Kindly advice.

Thanks
GA

on 2/03/2010 10:11 AM

xyz123 said,

Hi All,
Will this also work for Microsoft Office 2003. Kindly advice.

Thanks
GA

on 2/03/2010 10:13 AM

Rob said,

many thanks, this worked perfectly
i've recovered all my lost emails
again, many thanks

on 9/03/2010 10:30 PM

Rob said,

many thanks, this worked perfectly!