Need email fix

Question

All my mail is going to delete and not inbox. I have now been trying to get help for over one hour.

Answer 1

Hi! Please, open Edge and sign in to your Outlook.com account. Once you are signed in, click the gear icon in the upper-right corner to open Settings, then go into Mail settings.

From there, open Rules and review the list carefully. Check whether there are any rules you did not create yourself, especially anything suspicious such as rules that forward all messages to an unknown address or move emails to Deleted Items. Delete any rule you do not recognize. After that, also review Forwarding and IMAP settings and confirm that no unknown email address has been added. If you see a forwarding address that is not yours, remove it immediately.

Answer 2

In Outlook.com, this behavior is usually caused by a rule or junk/deletion handling setting that is automatically moving messages out of the Inbox.

Take these steps in Outlook.com (web):

1. Check Junk Email and Deleted Items
   • Open Outlook.com and look in Junk Email and Deleted Items to confirm new messages are arriving there instead of Inbox.
   • If legitimate messages are in Junk Email, select one and mark it as Not junk so future messages from that sender are treated correctly.
2. Review rules and filters
   • Go to Settings (gear icon) → Email → Rules (or similar rules/filters section).
   • Look for any rule that moves all or most incoming mail to Deleted Items, Junk Email, or another folder.
   • Disable or delete that rule. A misconfigured rule like “apply to all messages → move to Deleted Items” will cause exactly this behavior.
3. Check junk/spam handling level
   • Go to Settings → Email → Junk Email.
   • Review Incoming mail handling and any blocked senders/domains.
   • If needed, temporarily set Incoming mail handling to Strict, save, sign out, then sign back in and set it back to Standard, then save again. This reset has been reported to fix incorrect junk handling.
4. If the problem continues
   • Use Outlook.com’s built-in support: select Help on the menu bar, describe the issue, then under Still need help? choose to contact support/chat with an agent so they can inspect the account configuration.

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References:

• Email is missing from your Outlook.com inbox
• Emails deleted from Outlook.com are reverting back to the Inbox
• Delete email in Outlook.com
• Outlook.com doesn't send any emails to junk folder - Microsoft Q&A
• Need to speak to a agent I am getting pop up draft scam emails - Microsoft Q&A
• Stopped receiving emails on my account. - Microsoft Q&A