Delete All Emails Before/After Particular Date from Outlook

Published By Siddharth Tehri

Approved By Aswin Vijayan

Published On January 22nd, 2024

Reading Time 3 Minutes Reading

Problem

Deleting Outlook emails one by one, tends to be a tedious task, which results in investment of extra time and efforts. Therefore, they require a workaround that deletes all emails before/after particular data from their account.

Solution

There are two workarounds for deleting emails before/after a particular date using Outlook inbuilt tools/function.

Solution 1: Delete Emails Before/After Date by Sorting

One technique is sorting email messages on basis of received date and selecting emails received before/after a particular date to delete them. For doing such deletion, perform following steps:

1. Launch Microsoft Outlook application.
2. Select the mail folder (Inbox, Outbox, Sent Items, etc.) or subfolders in which you want to perform deletion.
3. Now in the menu bar of Outlook, Click on View tab and then go to Reading Pane option.
   
   
4. Click on scroll down button of Reading Pane and from the drop-down menu, select Off option.
   
   
5. Now sort all mails on basis of received data in ascending or descending order by clicking on Received column.
   
   
6. Select all the emails from or before/after a particular date. For example:If you want to delete mails before 26 April 2016, select mails that have 26 April 2016 as their Received Date and press Ctrl + Shift + End & press Delete key.If you want to delete mails after 1 April 2016 hence, select mail that have 1 April 2016 as their Received Date press Ctrl + Shift + Home & press Delete key.

Solution 2: Delete Emails Before/After date by New Search Folder

Another workaround is by utilizing a New Search Folder feature of MS Outlook. To perform deletion using this feature, follow the following procedure:

1. Launch Microsoft Outlook Application.
2. In the menu tool strip of Outlook, Click on Folder >> New Search Folder
   
   
3. Now a New Search Folder window will appear, select Create a custom Search Folder option.
   
   
4. Now select Choose option, which will open Custom Search Folder window.
   
   
5. In this window, mention the Name for new search folder. Click on Browse and select folder from which you want to delete the mail & click on OK button to continue.
   
   
6. After that click on Criteria button, this will open a Search Folder Criteria dialog box.
   
   
   
7. In this dialog box click on Advanced tab.
   
   
8. Go to Field >> All Mail Fields >> Received 
9. Click on Condition and select on or before/on or after (As per your requirement) from the drop-down menu.
   
   
10. Now enter value in the Value field (enter a specific data) and then click on Add List Button >> OK.
11. In navigation pane, click on New Search Folder and then press Ctrl + A for selecting the mails to be deleted from folder.
12. After selection procedure is completed, press Delete key for performing deletion.

Conclusion

Both workaround are easy and relevant to delete all emails before/after particular date from Outlook. Hence, we do not require any additional software for email deletion in Outlook. If you have deleted emails by mistake or someone else have deleted it which you don’t want to happen then you can easily recover permanently deleted emails from Outlook.