back sent mails

Question

back sent mails

Vladimir Cirkovic 0

Does anyone know how and if it is possible to restore deleted sent mails?
They are not in the trash. They were probably deleted due to full storage. It would be great if someone could help me get them back.

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Answer 1

Winnie-B 8,210 Microsoft External Staff Moderator

Hi Vladimir Cirkovic

From what you described, some sent messages are now missing, they are not in Deleted Items/Trash, and you suspect this may have happened after the mailbox became full.

I can see the Q&A Assist reply already covered the main recovery paths in Outlook. To avoid repeating that, could you let me know whether you already tried those steps, and if yes, what happened?

To narrow this down correctly, could you please confirm which type of account this is in classic Outlook:

Outlook.com / Microsoft 365 / Exchange, or
Gmail / Yahoo / another IMAP/POP account?

In the meantime, please sign in to the same account on Outlook on the web to check whether the missing sent emails are visible there.

Looking forward to your reply so I can guide you further. Thank you for your understanding.

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

Winnie-B 8,210 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-03-30T05:26:46.6766667+00:00

Good day Vladimir Cirkovic, I hope you're well. May I know if you've got any chance to check my reply? If you have any further updates on this issue, please feel free to reach back. I'm happy to help you.

Vladimir Cirkovic 0

I followed all the steps and was unable to recover the lost sent emails.
I use web outlook, and since that day also the outlook application on the computer.
I also installed thunderbird and did export through it, but there are no emails there either.
They seem to be lost forever.
Thanks for your reply.

Winnie-B 8,210 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-03-30T08:39:54.6033333+00:00
Hi Vladimir Cirkovic,

Thanks for your response.

Please sign in to Outlook on the web again and try the following:

Use the search bar to look for the missing emails.

Make sure all filters are turned off.

Check the Deleted Items folder again.

If the emails are not there, open Deleted Items and check the Recoverable Items option (Recover items deleted from this folder) to see whether the messages can still be restored.

If the missing emails do not appear in those locations, I’m afraid I do not have any other recovery step to suggest from the Outlook side.

Since you are also using Thunderbird, I recommend contacting Thunderbird Support to check whether there may be any recovery options available on their side, especially if the messages may have been stored locally in Thunderbird. You can start here: Thunderbird Help. Thunderbird’s official contact page also directs support questions to that help site.

Disclaimer: Thunderbird is a third-party product, and the linked website is not owned or operated by Microsoft. Microsoft is not responsible for the content, accuracy, or functionality of third-party websites.

Answer 2

Deleted sent messages can sometimes be recovered, but it depends on where they are in the deletion lifecycle and on mailbox retention settings.

Check the Sent Items folder
- Sent messages are stored in Sent Items. If they do not appear there, confirm that Outlook is configured to save sent messages:
  - In classic Outlook: File > Options > Mail.
  - Under Save messages, ensure Save copies of messages in Sent Items folder is checked.
- If this was previously unchecked, older sent messages may never have been stored and cannot be recovered.
Check Deleted Items / Trash
- If sent messages were deleted (manually or due to storage cleanup), they may be in Deleted Items or Trash.
- If found there, move them back to Sent Items or another folder.
Recover from Recoverable Items (Exchange/Outlook.com/Microsoft 365)
- If Deleted Items was emptied or messages were removed due to quota cleanup, they may still be in the Recoverable Items folder, depending on server retention settings.
- In classic Outlook, use the Recover Deleted Items feature (if available for the account type) to restore items. When items are restored from Recoverable Items, they go to Deleted Items. From there, move them back to Sent Items.
If storage cleanup permanently removed items
- If the mailbox exceeded its quota and the server performed permanent cleanup beyond the deleted-item retention period, or if the items were purged from Recoverable Items, they cannot be restored from Outlook.
- In an Exchange/Microsoft 365 environment, an administrator might still be able to recover items using server-side tools (such as single item recovery or backup restore) if the retention period has not expired.

If the messages are not in Sent Items, Deleted Items, or Recoverable Items, and no server backup/retention option is available, they cannot be recovered via Outlook.

References:

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back sent mails

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