delete a sent email

Question

i set email by mistake and i want to delete it permanently from my email and recipients emails as well

Answer 1

Hi @Tarek Korany, 

I hope you're doing well and I’m really sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused. 

Before we proceed, please note that this is a user-to-user community forum. As a moderator, I don’t have access to your mailbox, your organization’s Microsoft 365 environment, or recipients’ mailboxes to delete or recall messages on your behalf. But I can walk you through the available options and point you to the right official resources or support channels if needed. 

1/ Deleting the email from your mailbox  

You can delete the message from your own mailbox by:

• Go to Sent Items and select the email you sent by mistake. 
• Click Delete (or press the Delete key) to move it to Deleted Items. 
• Then go to Deleted Items. 
• Right-click Deleted Items and choose Empty folder (or Empty Deleted Items) to clear it. 

Note: This action only affects your mailbox and does not remove the email from the recipients’ inboxes. 

2/ Removing the email from recipients’ mailboxes  

Removing an email from the recipients’ mailboxes is only possible using the Recall feature, and it is available only when both you and the recipients are using Microsoft 365/Exchange work or school accounts within the same organization. 

Please note that if any recipients are outside your organization (for example, Gmail, Outlook.com/Hotmail/live.com, or other external email domains), Recall will not work for those recipients.  

1. Open Outlook Web 
2. Go to Sent Items folder and double-click the message so it opens in another window. 
3. Select Recall message and select one of the two options: 
4. 
5. "Only recall this message" or "Recall and open this message as a draft" 
6. Select OK. 

Even within the same organization, recall cannot guarantee 100% “complete removal,” especially if a recipient has already opened the email or forwarded it, downloaded attachments, copied content, or captured screenshots. 

You can follow Microsoft’s official steps here to attempt a recall: Recall or replace a sent email in Outlook 

To reduce the chance of this happening again, you may want to enable a short “send delay/undo send” window (if your email service supports it), so you have a few seconds to cancel right after clicking Send. For example, Gmail allows an “Undo Send” cancellation period of 5-30 seconds.  

I truly hope this information is helpful. If you have any questions or need me to check anything, feel free to leave a comment below. I'm very happy to help. 

Thank you again for your understanding and cooperation. 

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Answer 2

A sent email cannot be removed from the recipient’s mailbox once it has been delivered. Deleting or permanently deleting email in Outlook or Outlook.com only affects copies stored in the sender’s mailbox (and related folders such as Deleted Items or Archive), not messages already delivered to other mailboxes.

To permanently delete the message from the sender side in Outlook/Outlook.com:

1. Delete the message from the Sent Items folder so it moves to Deleted Items.
2. Permanently delete it from Deleted Items:
   • In Outlook on the web/light version: select the Deleted Items folder, then either:
     • Right-click the folder and choose Empty folder to remove all items, or
     • Select specific items, right-click, and choose Delete to permanently delete them.
   • In Outlook.com (full version): you can also permanently delete selected messages by highlighting them and pressing Shift+Del on the keyboard.

Note that:

• Items in Deleted Items may be automatically removed after a retention period (for example, 30 days in Outlook.com), but until then they still exist in that folder.
• These actions do not delete or recall messages from recipients’ mailboxes.

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References:

• Read and send email in the light version of Outlook
• Storage limits in Outlook.com
• How do I permanently delete an email?

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