Forum Discussion
How to bulk delete old emails?
I've been using Outlook 365 for a couple of years, on an Outlook Exchange account.
I just had an email telling me that my space is running out... Almost at 25gb!
So I've logged in to OWA to see about clearing out old emails (they go back to 2010, which is odd because I've only had an Exchange account since 2017) but it looks like there's no way to bulk delete old emails bar highlighting one, scrolling up the list and SHIFT+ Highlighting one further up the list.
But, it only lets me do a few at a time, and I seem to have a few hundred thousand emails in there. It would take days to delete the old emails like this.
Is there another way!?
13 Replies
MattOHC185 Use Search - received:1/1/2010..1/1/2018 - select all - if delete is not an option, move to a folder then delete the folder.
The problem with bulk delete is the messages lazy load and its a lot of scrolling. There is/was a bug where you could not select all and delete - you needed to select all but the last message. (That bug might be fixed).
Or use outlook desktop, its easier.
You're better off setting a retention policy, which will automatically delete older messages or move them to the Online Archive (if such is enabled). Check with your IT support folks though, as we cannot know what kind of policies are configured in your organization.
If you plan to do thing via the client, you can create a search for messages received prior a given date (for example Received<06/15/2017), then select all > delete all.
VasilMichevThanks for the reply!
However, how do I do the search!? I only have a search within the mailbox and it doesn't have any advanced options for the search - just a simple text search.
And what is the Retention Policy - will it work retroactively?
MattOHC185 I gave you example above on how you can do the search, just change the date as needed.
