Unable to delete emails from outlook mailbox

Hi Rama D,

Good day.

Hope you are doing well you for posting in Microsoft Community.

To help us narrow down the issue

1. Check if your Outlook is in Cached Exchange Mode. If it is, try disabling it and then try deleting the emails again.
2. Check if you have any rules set up in Outlook that might be preventing the emails from being deleted. If you do, try disabling them and then try deleting the emails again.
3. Try deleting the emails from the Outlook Web App (OWA) instead of the Outlook client application. This will help you determine if the issue is with the client application or the server.

If you are using an Outlook desktop client, please kindly open Outlook in safe mode (Press Windows + R keys > type outlook.exe /safe > click OK) to check a particular situation or result scenario

Please also ask an Office 365 admin to sign in Office 356 admin center, navigate to Exchange admin center > Recipients > Mailbox > choose the affected email account and click Edit > mailbox features > Litigation hold, check if your organization admin enabled Litigation hold on these mailboxes. If Litigation Hold is enabled, the users will be unable to delete emails in their accounts.

I hope this helps let me know if this is contrary to what you need, I would still be helpful to answer more of your questions.

Best Regards

Microsoft Community

Hi Rama D,

Good day.

Hope you are doing well you for posting in Microsoft Community.

To help us narrow down the issue

1. Check if your Outlook is in Cached Exchange Mode. If it is, try disabling it and then try deleting the emails again.
2. Check if you have any rules set up in Outlook that might be preventing the emails from being deleted. If you do, try disabling them and then try deleting the emails again.
3. Try deleting the emails from the Outlook Web App (OWA) instead of the Outlook client application. This will help you determine if the issue is with the client application or the server.

If you are using an Outlook desktop client, please kindly open Outlook in safe mode (Press Windows + R keys > type outlook.exe /safe > click OK) to check a particular situation or result scenario

Please also ask an Office 365 admin to sign in Office 356 admin center, navigate to Exchange admin center > Recipients > Mailbox > choose the affected email account and click Edit > mailbox features > Litigation hold, check if your organization admin enabled Litigation hold on these mailboxes. If Litigation Hold is enabled, the users will be unable to delete emails in their accounts.

I hope this helps let me know if this is contrary to what you need, I would still be helpful to answer more of your questions.

Best Regards

Microsoft Community

Thank you for your reply on this.

I am trying to delete the emails from Outlook Web App only now, but still I am unable to delete the emails. So, the issue is with server only.

I will check with Admin on the Litigation hold option and see if it is causing the issue. I will let you know once I have more information on this.

Thank you,

Rama

Finally my issue is resolved.

Our IT Global Admin has turned off the Litigation hold, but I could not delete emails for 1 week. I tried many times but the result was same.

Microsoft support team has advised us to use the archive option. Our IT Global Admin has turned on the Archiving option on my email. Surprisingly, on the next day, I was able to delete the emails.

I am able to delete the old/unwanted emails now without any issue.

Thank you for your support on this.

Thank you,

Rama

Hi Rama D,

I am glad the resolutions have worked for you. Could you kindly provide feedback on our reply above to help other users with a similar issue to identify this thread in the community?

Thank you for your cooperation and understanding.  Please do not hesitate to post your queries in Microsoft Community and we will always do our best to assist you!

Stay safe and healthy.

Best Regards

Microsoft Community

I am also having the same difficulties. Very strange this is happening to several people 🤔 definitely makes you think what have they done.