How to stop delete key from deleting the entire email in outlook?

This issue started today on my Desktop Office using a corded keyboard.

Fortunately it was moving these "deleted" emails to my drafts, from there I was just popping out the window as others have explained to have it function as normal.

I decided to close and re-open Outlook and it's behaving normal now. Very odd, hope it doesn't come back.

absurd is the kindest of words for it. Quite why MS are allowing this problem to persist without either FIXING IT or providing clear instructions as to settings changes (the ones post in this thread are simply erroneous for the free Outlook I'm using) is a total mystery to me.

How anyone can think it is reasonable to have this behaviour is beyond me.

Started happening to me yesterday (Sep 10, 2024), the only reason I noticed what it was doing (and how many emails it had been deleting) is that using CTRL+DEL gave me a pop-up saying it was going to "ignore" the entire conversation. I could hit Cancel, then decided to look through my Deleted folder and found a bunch of messages I had lost.

Tried rebooting but the issue persists. Right now the only "fix" is to double-click the email or select "pop out" to edit the email in a separate window. This is absurd.

My version is Microsoft® Outlook® for Microsoft 365 MSO (Version 2408 Build 16.0.17928.20114) 64-bit

So, I know this isn't the answer anyone is looking for, but I posted above with the same issue, then suddenly (after a restart, and an update), the deleting thing stopped happening!

The ole' IT trick (did you try turning it on and off) kind of worked for me. (not immediately, but within a few days... hard to explain, it really did just stop happening).

That said, if you find yourself accidentally deleting emails from long ago, and its hard to find them in your deleted items, there is a way to sort your deleted folder on 'time deleted'. That way, you can sort the deleted folder by most recently deleted (regardless of the original email time/date), and it makes it easier to find what you accidentally deleted.

(just google how to sort liek that, as I don't recall how I did it; but i beleive tis a setting in Outlook)

My Outlook just started doing this yesterday - I can't even count how many emails I have deleted and had to start over because I can't always find them in my deleted folder - this is beyond ridiculous!! Really hoping someone comes up with a fix soon! This is unacceptable when trying to do a job that requires email threads be maintained!