How to Recover Deleted Outlook Items in Office 365 (2024)

Statista says that Microsoft Office 365 controls nearly 50 percent of the worldwide market for office productivity software. If you’re one of the millions of people and companies that use the Office 365 suite, you have probably permanently deleted an email in error.

The good news is that Office 365 has built-in data protection capabilities that allow you to recover Outlook emails. That includes various email retention policy features that can be configured to meet specific legal compliance and operational requirements. But Exchange Online only keeps deleted emails for 14 days by default, up to a maximum of 30 days.

If you’re still within the recovery window, here are the steps you can take for Outlook email recovery from the Deleted Items folder:

• Open Outlook and navigate to the "Deleted Items" folder.

• Search for the email you want to recover. You can scroll through the items or use the search bar to locate it.

•Once you've found the email you want to recover, right-click on it.

• Select "Move" from the context menu.

• Choose the folder to which you want to move the email (e.g., your inbox or another folder).

• The email will be moved back to the selected folder, effectively recovering it.

If the email you're looking for is not in the "Deleted Items" folder, you may still be able to recover permanently deleted emails from the Outlook "Recoverable Items" folder. In this hidden folder, items are retained even after deletion. Here's how to recover Outlook emails and items in this folder:

• In Outlook, click on the "Deleted Items" folder.

• On the ribbon at the top of the screen, click "Recover items deleted from this folder."

• A list of deleted items that are recoverable will be exposed.

• Select the email you want to recover, and then click "Recover Selected Items" or "Recover All Items."

• The selected email will be restored to your mailbox.

The Microsoft Outlook Web App offers customizable retention options that an administrator can select depending on how long an email needs to be archived for legal or compliance reasons. These options may only be available if your organization's specific email retention policies and settings enable it.

Suppose an email has been permanently deleted and is no longer recoverable through these methods. In that case, you may need to consult your organization's IT department or administrator, as they may have additional data recovery options, such as data backup solutions or legal hold settings.

SaaS Backup: Next-Level Data Protection

While recovering a deleted email is relatively simple, plenty of threats to your data can make it impossible. Ransomware is one example, but any downtime can be costly or even disastrous to your organization. But under the shared responsibility model, you are responsible for protecting your data, endpoints, and accounts, as well as access management—not Microsoft.

While emails may be a crucial component of your operations, all your SaaS data must be protected, including Microsoft 365, Microsoft Azure AD, and Microsoft Dynamics (plus Salesforce and Google Workspace).

Arcserve SaaS Backup offers complete ransomware protection, backup, and recovery for data stored in Microsoft 365, Microsoft 365 Azure AD, and Microsoft Dynamics 365, with these valuable features:

• Simple setup in under five minutes

• Management via a single pane of glass, with multi-tenant and role-based access controls (RBAC) that make navigation fast while ensuring complete control over the protected data

• Immutable backups, using a blockchain-based algorithm, that give you a last line of defense that ensures you can recover an unaltered copy of your data even if a ransomware attack is successful

• Cost-effective solution with a single price per seat that includes all SaaS data protection functionalities

• Custom backup retention settings to meet your compliance requirements
• Unlimited data storage in an online cloud tier, allowing fast access & restores
• No additional charges for network traffic: ingress, egress, or transaction fees

•Secure, scalable, and available by design, with data in transit and data at rest encrypted with a default 30-day delete retention. Four copies of your backup data are stored in two different data centers within the same region, guaranteeing data sovereignty and redundancy.

Don’t Get Your SaaS Kicked

An Arcserve technology partner can provide you with expert guidance in ensuring your SaaS data is protected.

Find an Arcserve technology partner.

To learn more about Arcserve SaaS Backup, request a demo. And be sure to check out our 30-day free trial offer.