Outlook deletes all emails after 30 days

MS Outlook desktop?

You switched the MS Outlook view to "New Outlook"?

BT if memory serves me is an IMAP type

If you use the win Mail app and add the BT mail account, what then?

Hello Dave_apr, I'm Soji and I'll be happy to answer your questions. I am a Microsoft consumer and an independent advisor with no account access. For clarity, this is a public user-to-user support forum. We are users just like you who help other users. User account cannot be accessed. From your post, I understand that you want to stop emails from being deleted automatically after 30 days. Please note that, if the mails are accidentally deleted, a. Email is automatically deleted from your Deleted Items folder after 30 days. b. Items removed from your Deleted Items folder are recoverable for 30 days. c. Junk email is retained for 30 days before it is automatically deleted. To prevent Outlook emails from being deleted after 30 days, kindly follow the steps below: 1. Go to Settings >> Mail >> the account in question >> Advanced >> Remove and set to Never. 2. Check if Auto Archive is enabled. a. Open Outlook and right click on the folder from which you do not wish to have emails automatically deleted. b. Click on Properties >> Click on AutoArchive. c. Select Do not archive items in this folder >> Click on OK to save your changes. I hope this helps. Thank you for your kindly understanding. If this resolves the issue, Give back to the Community. Help the next person who has this issue by indicating if this reply solved your problem. Click Yes or No below. Regards.

Thanks for your response but I have previously been through all the settings with no effect.

Which "settings" are you referring to? Do you man "options" in the bottom left sidebar when you click "File" in Outlook?

Or do you mean "settings" in Windows? if so, I do not see the options you suggest. I just get what is shown below.

I have checked all the auto archive settings in Outlook as I mentioned in my original post and they are all set to "Do not archive........"

Thanks for your response.

I am using Outlook as part of Microsoft 365 on a desktop PC.

I am not using the new outlook view.

Yes, all accounts in BT and Outlook are IMAP accounts.

POP3 accounts won't synchronise properly in BT.

I haven't tried the win mail account.

Regards,

Dave

HI. I'm Brian and I'll try to help. This forum is dedicated to the new Outlook for Windows. Is that what you're using or are you using classic Outlook for Windows? That's covered in a different forum. When you look at the top bar of Outlook, do you see Home, View and Help or do you see File< Home, Send/Receive, Folder and View? If you see the first set, you're using the new Outlook. If you see the second set, you're classic Outlook. If you're using classic Outlook, click File>Account Settings>Account Settings and select the Email tab. Double-click an account, then click More Settings. You should see a sync slider that controls how much data from your mailbox is locally cached. The default is 30 days. I suspect that's what's going on in your case. Move the slider to see more. Do this for each of your accounts.

Hi Brian,

I think you may have cracked it!

I'm using the classic view.

I've looked in settings before but never noticed that slider, see below.

As it said keep mail offline, I think I ignored it thinking it wasn't relevant, but what you say makes sense to me now.

It was set to 30 days as you predicted but something must have changed because, as I say, it didn't delete any stored emails for years.

Probably the result of one of Microsoft's updates which went unnoticed.

You are the first person to highlight this as a possibility for the problem and I've been searching for help for months and months.

I've got to wait now for 30 days to see if it is the solution but I'm confident.

Thanks so much for taking the time to look at it.

Regards,

Dave

Outlook should start caching the messages on the server right away. You shouldn't need to wait another 30 days.

You're right. Everytime I click on a folder now, instead of watching the emails disappear, they all come back!

I can't thank you enough for your solution.

After months and months of trying, no search site or anyone I contacted mentioned this small adjustment to the settings.

Thanks again, it ends a very frustrating period in my life!!

Regards,

Dave

If you right-click the top folder of your IMAP account, you should see an "IMAP Folders" entry in the menu that appears. Click that. Then select the folders you want Outlook to update automatically without having to visit them.

how do you stop the NEW Outlook from deleting "deleted" emails after 30 days? Is this possible? or is new outlook automatically archiving deleted emails after 30 days? It looks like emails are being archived automatically, in NEW Outlook. Can anyone confirm? thank you.