You know that feeling when you’ve highlighted a number of emails and held down the shift key and tapped the delete key to permanently delete them all and then you spy an email in the group (just before they disappear) that you didn’t want to delete! Yes, I’m sure we’ve all done that. This article will show you how to recover deleted emails – from outlook.com in the cloud and your desktop Outlook. To Delete or Permanently Delete We’re all familiar with the delete key and we use it multiple times a day.
The Sweep feature was recently introduced to Outlook on the Web (formerly known as Outlook Web App) along with a wave of updates that enhanced Outlook for Office 365.It’s hard to miss in the new UI, but some Outlook users may overlook its power.
However, perhaps some don’t know there’s a way to bypass putting email in your Deleted Items Folder and permanently getting rid of them. To permanently delete, simply hold down the shift key and then press the delete key. You’ll get a warning that it’ll be permanently gone and you confirm. I like using it because it saves a step – if it’s already gone, I don’t have to go and empty it from my deleted items. Recovering Permanently Deleted Items Last week, I was cleaning out an email account I use for signing up for things that I know I’ll probably never read, but there’s something cool being offered. You’ve done this – right!
Then I realized – too late – that I deleted a group of items I wanted to save to go through to find a discount code! I had always heard that deleted items could be recovered, but probably not permanently deleted items. So I did a quick search on it and found The article said, “you can recover those items if they’re still in your Deleted Items folder, and in some cases, you can even recover items after the Deleted Items folder is emptied.” It didn’t say anything about recovering permanently deleted items, but I thought I’d give it a shot.
Steps To Recover Permanently Deleted Items The steps are the same from the web outlook.com as well as Desktop Outlook 2013/2016:. Click on your Deleted Items folder.
From Desktop Outlook, look at the top left for ‘recover deleted items from server’. From the web, look for the bar at the top that says, Recover Deleted Items. On the desktop, you’ll be presented with a pop-up window with a large number of deleted items. Select the ones you want and they will be restored back to the in-box. On the web, a new window will open (you may have to enable pop-ups).
You’ll see a list of emails with empty check boxes. Check the ones you want to recover and they’ll be put back in the in-box. That’s all there is to it! Yes – I did find the email I needed – yay!
Desktop View of Restoring Summary The article from Outlook.com that I linked to above did have a couple notes at the bottom. You have 30 days to recover items from your deleted folder and just 14 days to check on things in your Junk Folder until they are deleted. If you have and monitor an account for your child, any email you delete from there can not be recovered. If you need to restore permanently deleted emails, I hope this will be as easy for you to do as it was for me. Since Outlook.com has become more business and ‘Exchange’ mail-like, maybe that’s why I didn’t have any problems. Microsoft has been putting a lot of upgrades into Outlook.com – its free mail service. A recent update now has many of us using outlook.com at a business-class email experience.
Updated 1-26-2017 – this tip applies to people who use Outlook 2016/2013 on Windows only. If you have a Mac, you don’t need this tip. The process of upgrading these accounts somehow disconnects or degrades the connection between outlook.com and the desktop Outlook 2016/2013. Microsoft has sent emails out on how to reconnect to Outlook 2016/2013 to continue with uninterrupted mail delivery to your desktop Outlook. I first got a notice in the summer, but I was just too busy with a number of projects to look at it. I got another one this week and decided to take care of it. Do You Have The Outlook.com Upgrade?
If you got an email from Microsoft, that means that account has been upgraded. I have several Outlook.com accounts and when I went to read about this upgrade, the blog post said they have upgraded ALL Outlook accounts – that means if you have a.hotmail,.live or.msn account, they have been or will be upgraded. How do you know if you’ve been upgraded? Luckily, there is an easy way. Just log into your Microsoft email account and if you have a search box that says, “Search Mail and People”, you are upgraded. Here are two of my accounts and it is easy to see which is which.
How To Reconnect Your Outlook.com to Desktop Outlook There are three ways to do the reconnect – they are:. If you only have one Outlook.com email on your desktop application. If you have more than one email running on your desktop application.
Work-arounds for known issues (custom domain, outlook crashes, outlook appears with a long string of numbers). Reconnect to Outlook – Only 1 Email Account on Desktop Outlook Note: You do not need to delete the old profile first and can refer to it to get the new one set up. Once you have the new profile set up, you should select to “Always use this profile” option, or delete the old profile. Go to Control Panel. Search for Mail.
Choose Show Profiles,. Then Add – choose a name, then click OK.
Now, it’s time to set up the new Outlook account. You can do it from this screen and click on Email Accounts and add it right there, or you can do as Microsoft suggests and open your desktop Outlook and go to FileAdd and add your account there. You should only need to fill in your name, email address and password and Outlook should find all the settings for you. Reconnect to Outlook – More Than 1 Email Account on Desktop Outlook I tried this way to see if it would work, but it would not connect to the server.
The email account I was trying to update was a custom domain, so I needed to go to the Work-Around method. Here are the steps if you have a ‘regular’ Outlook account. Open Outlook. On the File tab, under Account Information, choose Account Settings Account Settings. On the E-mail tab, select the email account you want to remove, and then choose Remove on the mini toolbar.
Now go through the steps listed above to add your account by filling in your name, email address and password and you should be all set! Remove your current, or old Outlook account here Reconnect to Outlook – 3 Known Issues Microsoft has listed 3 of their top known issues which are detailed at the beginning of this article. I’m going to talk about the issue I had – which was since I had a custom domain, I was having problems reconnecting. For the last several months, I’ve noticed my mail has been extremely slow to pop in on my desktop Outlook, but it was always there when I checked it from the web. I didn’t put two and two together until I got the second reminder email this week – duuhhh. If you’re wondering what a custom domain is, let me explain. For a number of years, Microsoft had a little-known perk where they’d let anyone configure a personally-branded custom domain.
In 2013 and set up two accounts. Several years later, Microsoft took that nice perk away and they said everyone who had a custom domain could keep it for free, for the time being. Back to the instructions To fix my problem, I logged into my domain registrar (I use Hover), and took a look at my MX records. There I saw a MX entry with the term ‘invalid’ in there. I figured that had to be wrong and I deleted that record.
Now Microsoft didn’t address that at all, their fix is to add a CNAME record to the DNS settings. But I thought first I’d try removing this invalid record and then try to set my account up and wa-la, it worked. These are instructions from Microsoft I decided to try reconnecting to Outlook without adding a CNAME record and things are working well, so for now, I will leave it as is. After I took out the invalid MX record, it all worked for me. The Other Two Known Issues They are Outlook crashing and Outlook showing up in your email account with an extremely long name. Since I didn’t face either of these, I’ll leave you with for the troubleshooting fixes for those. If you haven’t logged into your Outlook email account for a while, you may be greeted with this image after your account is upgraded.
I signed into a little-used Outlook account and found it was upgraded with this message. There’s a series of images and even some video to tell about the changes. Outlook.com email has had significant upgrades this fall.
The new in-box look is cleaner and brighter. This post will focus on four Outlook.com organizing tips that are big time savers. They are:.
Easily delete, find or move all email from a specific sender. Ability to select everything from a particular folder and delete it quickly. Using the sweep feature, manage email from a particular sender. Quickly categorize emails and apply to future and past emails Let’s take a look at each of these outlook.com features – remember that these apply to the free and web-based outlook.com email from Microsoft. Easily delete, find or move all email from a specific sender If you subscribe to lots of newsletters, like I do, sometimes you get really behind in your reading.
When that happens, I go to the web Outlook.com to clean things up. In this example, you don’t need to even select the email, just hover over it and you’ll get the below pop-up box where you can either move all of those emails or delete all of them. Ability to select everything from a particular folder and delete This is a wonderful feature with Outlook.com. I have quite a few email accounts and some of my in-boxes and folders get out-of-control. When I go to check and clean them up, this feature will get rid of simply everything in one click! Most of us won’t want to delete everything from an in-box, but if you set folders up, like I do for various purposes, it is very handy.
I wish my Yahoo email account had this feature. It’s my junk account and there are so many emails to clean up and they have to be done page by page. Here’s the screenshot for this feature. Use the Sweep feature to manage emails from a particular sender This isn’t a new feature, but one I love. With this feature, I select a sender and then tell outlook.com that I want to do something in particular with it from now on. For some newsletters, it’s great for keeping the latest one and getting rid of all the rest. Or perhaps you just want to keep a certain time period of mail from a sender.
Categorize emails and apply to future and past emails This is another feature that helps us manage our volume of email. Outlook.com does take care of some of this for us by recognizing and categorizing our emails. If you look over to the right side of your mailbox, you’ll see the Categories column.
Any email that just has ‘Categories’ in the category column are not categorized. Feel free to use one of the provided categories, or make your own. After you apply your category, scroll down to the bottom and click on the ‘apply to all from’ and then all emails from that particular sender will be organized for you. Perhaps you have a huge inbox, but you have emails from a particular person in a category. To view just that category, click on the ‘view all’ setting in the upper left (this check-box can be seen on the first image in this article). Now you can click on one of the 7 categories to hopefully find what you’re looking for. Keep up With Outlook.com There’s always something new happening with Outlook.com.
You can keep up over at the. I see the blog also has articles about Office 365 mixed in with Outlook.com articles. Sometimes there are so many changes it’s overwhelming to try to keep up. These four things are focused on keeping you and your email more organized. Try one out today, or if you have a great tip, please leave me a comment! Today, we’re going to look at some of the features of Contacts/People in Outlook.com email from the web or internet view. If you have an Outlook.com account, you can make a group contact list from the web view.
Having a group list of a small business group or family members saves a lot of time. It’s important to note that if you are a user of Microsoft Office 365 as a subscription, you will not be able to create a group from within your desktop Outlook 2013 application.
It can only be created from the web interface. Many have asked, complained and wondered why this is, but no satisfactory answer has been given. The Group Contact List feature for Outlook.com for the web is rather new and it works very simply, so let’s take a look. After logging into your account, click on the dots over on the left and then all your on-line Microsoft applications appear. Select ‘People’. (Yes, it used to be called contacts, but it’s been changed to People.) When ‘People’ opens up, you’ll see a list of your contacts in alphabetical order going down the left side of the screen.
Some contacts have photos and some don’t. The photos appear if you have connected your Outlook.com account with one or more social networks. Then the social networks will fill in the photo. Unfortunately, you can not add a photo to your contacts from the web or desktop. Photos will only appear if you connect your account to a social network and your ‘People’ have signed up for a social network. This is another thing people complain to Microsoft about and get no satisfactory answer. We’d like to add our own photos and make our Contacts/People more personalized, but we can’t do it right now.
You can have your contacts sorted in either first name or last name order. You can find this setting at the top of your screen and over to the right – click on the little gear and you’ll see the dropdown (below). Import Contacts If you have a new Outlook.com account, you can import your contacts from just about anywhere. Instructions are right on the People/Contacts page.
There are also instructions to import contacts from Social Networks, if you choose. Make an Outlook.com Contact Group From within the People view, just click the dropdown next to ‘New’ and select ‘New Group’.
You’ll need to give your group a name and then you can start adding people from your list of contacts (people). Be sure everyone you want to add to the group is already in your Contacts list because you will not be able to add people by simply typing in their email address. They must already be in your Contacts.
When finished adding, remember to click ‘Save’, located at the bottom of the page. Manage Your Contact Group Once you have your group set up, maybe you want to edit it.
There are two ways to do this. The first way is to find the name of the person in your contact list you’d like to add and click the box next to the name (located on the left). Once you click the box, you’ll notice at the top a new menu item ‘Group’ show up. Click the dropdown and you’ll be shown the names of your groups and the option to start a new group. Make your choice and click save. The other way to edit your group is to find your group name in the list of People, click it and then you can add or remove from there.
It’s great to get the ability to make groups again using Microsoft’s free mail program. I wish they would add this feature for those of us using the Office 365 Home subscription service too. I think they may be working on it.
Gmail has a group feature, but I could not find one in Yahoo Mail. Log into your Outlook.com email from the web, take a look at this feature and try it out. If there is some tip you have to share, please leave a comment. Free email providers (like Outlook.com) have beefed up security. We’re going to go through the steps you need to take to verify your Outlook.com account. Verifying your account means you enter in an alternate email address (and perhaps your smart phone number too). You’ll then ask for and receive a code from Microsoft, enter it in and that proves to Microsoft that you’re the owner of that account.
We’ll go through the steps next. How To Verify Your Outlook.com Account If you’ve set up a new Microsoft account, you are asked right away to complete tasks that will secure and verify your account. They will ask you to enter in an alternate email address and your mobile number. The alternate email and your phone number are important and will help recover your account if you forget your Microsoft credentials or your account becomes compromised.
If you don’t set security up, you’ll be ‘nagged’ to do it every time you log in, and you’ll need to keep entering your credentials (irritating). I have an account I set up a while back and now want to use it, so we’ll use this for our example. I logged in and instead of being taken to the in-box, I was taken to my account information (the image above).
I selected the ‘Security & password’, and saw I had already set up a Gmail account as a backup contact. BUT they want to know that I know my entire Gmail address.
So I needed to fill it in in the rectangle. Then off I went to check my Gmail account for a code. I copied the code I got from my Gmail account, then went back to the screen and clicked the ‘I have a code’ hyperlink. You will NOT have to enter in your email address again (that is a bit confusing), then I entered it in and ticked the checkbox that I use this computer frequently so don’t ask me again. Doing this means that now the computer I’m on is verified and next time I want to access my account information, I shouldn’t have to go through this again. I believe this is the same for those on Windows 7. Now, my account is verified and I won’t have to go through additional steps when I’m logged in my account.
I signed out and back in again to see what would happen. I was able to go to any area of my account without having to re-verify.
Although going through these steps is a pain, it hopefully goes a long way to keep my account safe and lets me have access to all areas of my account without having to re-enter my credentials. Outlook.com also has a 2-step verification process that we’ll look at next week.
What has your experience been with securing your Microsoft, Gmail, Yahoo or other accounts? Please leave a message in the comments. Here it is 2014 and I am still seeing people using email provided to them from their ISP (Cox. Comcast, etc.). Even worse, I still see couples sharing an email address!
Holy Moly – let’s get this fixed, people! I won’t name names, but my two sisters are currently guilty of this. Hopefully, this article will give enough reasons to motivate people to get an email address that is 21st century!
Let’s define what I mean by real email vs. ISP email is something you get included (usually), when purchasing an internet package from your TV/phone provider. For example, we live in Cox country and when we established our service, we got 7 email addresses (that we could set up ourselves). So we have an email address like blank. Real email is is an email address that is portable, it will stay with you wherever you move to and is not dependent upon an internet, phone or TV service/subscription. Reasons to Have Real Email & Examples of Real Email.
The absolute best is to purchase/lease a domain and use it for your email. For example, I have 2 domains and use personalized email on both of them. One is business and one is personal. I was lucky to get my name as a domain. I think it’s cool to try to get your name as a domain, but if you can’t, there are many really cool extensions available, like the.me, for example.
Next best is to use one of the free email service providers. I recommend Outlook.com from Microsoft. I really like the easy way to categorize different types of mail and easily configure settings to sweep, or regulate how many of this or that newsletter I want to keep. I also like that they don’t read my email in order to serve me ads. After Outlook.com, there is Thunderbird Email from Mozilla, Gmail from Google and Yahoo Mail from Yahoo. I have accounts with all of these except Thunderbird and I have multiple Outlook accounts. Yahoo is even lower than Gmail because of the annoying flashing ads, the inability to add my Yahoo mail into my desktop Outlook (unless I pay), and because they have been hacked several times.
Google has made Gmail easy to set up on mobile devices, but I don’t care for the web interface and I find it difficult to navigate. But then I live in the Microsoft ecosystem. Portability is an advantage with your own email.
I mentioned this above. If you move out of your ISP provider’s area, you will not be able to take your email address with you. Better for using email on multiple devices. Most free email is IMAP. This means you can have your email account on multiple devices and they will all sync up. Since I’m a gadget girl with multiple devices, this is important to me. Our Cox email used to be only POP mail, so I only could read it from one machine, because it did not sync across devices.
Now Cox does offer IMAP. Easy set up with real email. If you have a smart phone, you’ve probably noticed in the email settings that they have Outlook, Gmail and Yahoo mail icons. This makes it easy for us to enter in our email address and password and usually that will take care of the setup. With ISP email, you probably will need your incoming and outgoing server info as well as other settings.
When I stayed with my little sister last month, she said her husband was tired of all the store newsletters cluttering up their shared inbox (yes, they are one of those people). So I set up an Outlook.com email address for her (on her iPad-haha Apple!) I also set up her OneDrive and had to be rather creative to transfer all the phone pictures from her Android phone over to her iPad (that might be another article).
So now she is gradually moving her shopping emails over to this new address and both will be happier. Hopefully these reasons for having a real email account make sense. If you need any help, leave me a comment. My Outlook.com newsletter folder This week, I was talking with a friend who has had her hotmail account for 20 years now. I was telling her she could upgrade her account and have it be an ‘outlook.com’ address instead of hotmail. Microsoft was rolling out upgrades to everyone this summer.
Now in order to keep the first part of your email (the part before the @), you may have needed to be nimble to snag your new outlook.com address last Fall. If you love your hotmail or live mail interface, you will have to make this move eventually.
I upgraded as soon as I heard about it and really like the clean interface and especially the features on keeping my mailbox cleaned up with the ‘sweep’ feature. This feature lets you tell Outlook how many of a certain newsletter you want to keep in your mailbox. So if you are subscribed to a lot of newsletters, just right-click on one of them and tell how many you want to keep.
The software does the rest! But back to the upgrade. Here’s a video that shows you how to do a manual upgrade. It just takes a minute or two.
But most should already have the new interface. More Upgrade to Outlook.com Information Perhaps you’ve been upgraded and haven’t seen any information on what was going on. This link has a lot of information with some related links that might be of interest.
Things About the Upgrade:. You can keep your @hotmail or @livemail or @msn email address. these IDs will work when you log into your Email, SkyDrive or other Microsoft accounts you may have set up. You won’t be able to go back once the upgrade has occurred. Your email settings remain the same.
You can set up a. I really like the outlook.com extension much better than live or hotmail! I hope this information has been helpful. Let me know how your upgrade went. Please leave me a comment.
Originally published in March, 2013 and updated/refreshed for today If you have a domain for a blog, website or just because you thought the name was cool, then you may have thought about getting email attached to that domain. Wouldn’t it be cool to have a FREE email service AND look professionally branded? An email that has a great calendar, contacts, to do list and even free 7 GB of storage that comes with it? You know I’m talking about Outlook.com from Microsoft, don’t you?
I know and love to talk about the 7 GB of free storage, the anywhere access and all of that, but this is about using the newly improved Outlook.com and attaching your domain to it – all for free. If you were a former user of Google’s free email domain service, you’ll know that it closed down a year or so ago.
So this is a great, free alternative to that service. I have several domains, my business email that I use with the great and powerful Office 365. But I was also lucky enough to snag my name as a domain www.lynndaug2016.dev. I used to have this domain attached to Microsoft’s Business Office Live service, but it was closed down a year or so ago.
So my lynndye email was switched over to, a great domain registrar. Shortly after I added email with them, I was trying to put something on my calendar and found out that calendar doesn’t come with Hover – wow – was I disappointed at not having a calendar for this account. So for the last year, I folded my lynndye email account into outlook.com as an extra account I could check. I also added it into my Outlook 2013 email client. Get Your Domain in Outlook.com It was time to go through the steps to claim my free, professionally branded email from Microsoft.
So I ‘binged’ around and found several good sources with instructions on how to accomplish this. I used two external sources in addition to Microsoft resources. One is mentioned next and the other will be at the end of the article. The most detailed instructions I found and used were from and the editorial staff at, a great resource for WordPress users. Since I used this site, I’m not going to go through the same steps they did, instead just click the link and walk yourself through their steps whenever you’re ready. I’m going to go through it a bit differently. First, you’ll need to go to to get started.
You will need to have access to wherever your domain is registered because you’ll be logging in to add MX Records, txt records and CNAME records in order for everything to work correctly. They will need to be entered in a certain order with some stops along the way to make sure things have propagated through the internet. When everything is set up, you’ll be verifying to Microsoft that you indeed own the domain. You’ll be telling your current domain registrar that you are changing where your mail will be sent, or that you are setting up mail for the first time.
Although I’ve worked some with mail settings, I’m not a pro by any means and I probably wouldn’t try this with a client’s mail, but since it was my own, I’ll experiment! Since I had mail service at hover, when I logged in, I first took a screenshot of my current settings (in case I did a lot of damage and needed to revert back). Then I deleted all the current settings and using the instructions from Microsoft and also referring to the wpbeginner directions, I entered in quite a few records. I have a snapshot below of the types of records I set up. Hover’s dashboard was pretty easy to use and I could have called them if I needed help, they have great customer service.
After waiting only 10 minutes or so, I went back to the Microsoft site to see if my account was ‘live’ and indeed it was! When I clicked on my domain, it brought up the screen below where I could start adding email addresses. I can add up to 500 for this domain and all for free. I’d have the ability to manage all of them. If you have a business and are on a budget, this could save you some money. I noticed the reporting link (image below on the left) where the domain manager can see how much space is being used, how many mail accounts there are and more than one domain can be managed and accessed from here. My Free Outlook.com Domain Email is Working Now, I can easily sign into my mail on the web and get to my email, calendar, contacts and of course my SkyDrive.
I’ve also added my custom domain email into my Outlook 2013 desktop client, so I can access my mail from there. It was a bit tricky adding this account because it wanted a server setting, Outlook didn’t just find it and install it on its own. I was lucky because I have a Windows Phone 8 and I looked at my previous settings for this account on the phone and used that server setting in Outlook and wonder of wonders, it worked. Otherwise, I’d probably gone to the to ask about it. So if you have a custom domain, try this out.
Microsoft has really put a lot of thought and effort into the new Outlook.com If Microsoft decides to discontinue this service, they do have a history of letting customers/consumers know in advance so they can make other arrangements. Here’s another resource I used from. So leave me a comment – do you think you’ll want to try this out?
Added on May 29, 2013: I’m an Outlook.com Insider, ask me about Outlook.com or to learn more about the Outlook.com Insiders program.
Hi, Outlook 2016 is a desktop app which is deferent from Outlook.com (Web app). Unfortunately, the feature you’re looking is not available in Outlook 2016. We listen to all feedback and consider them for additional feature/future versions of our products. Your feedback helps us know which features are most important to you.
We appreciate your continued interest in Microsoft products and services. Microsoft is committed to continuously improving your experience with our products. However, you may share your feedback with us by clicking on File Feedback any Office document. If you have further questions related to this, please let us know.