OVERVIEW
Target audience: entire McGill community
When you select and delete an email, it is transferred to the Deleted Items folder. It is only when you empty the Deleted Items folder that an email is permanently deleted; you can easily browse the folder to view the messages or move them back to your Inbox or other mail folders.
However, even if you have emptied the Deleted Items folder, you can still recover the email that was permanently deleted within the last 30 days from the Recoverable Items folder.
NOTICE: Automatic removal of harmful emails.
As part of our continuous efforts to protect our users, we use automated tools to remove harmful or suspicious emails and calendar items. While in a user's mailbox and depending on the threat, a message may be moved to the Junk Email folder or removed entirely. If an email suddenly disappears, it was likely flagged and handled by our security systems.
Steps to recover email items that were permanently deleted
Outlook desktop application: Follow instructions to Recover deleted items in Outlook for Windows on the Microsoft Support site.
Outlook on the Web (OWA):
- Log into your email account on OWA at https://outlook.com/mcgill.ca
- Click on the Deleted Items folder in the Navigation Pane.
- Click the link to Recover items deleted from this folder in the message pane.
- The Recoverable items list will appear, containing all email items deleted within the last 30 days. Select the item(s) you wish to recover, right-click in the pane and select Restore; the selected item(s) will be restored to your Inbox.
Contact the IT Service Desk for assistance if you need to restore emails that were deleted more than 30 days ago. Note that email recovery is on a best-efforts basis, and there is a limited restoration period.
Recover Deleted Items from a Shared Mailbox
When deleting an email from a Shared Mailbox, the message goes into your own Deleted Items folder, not the Shared Mailbox’s. Because of this, the Shared Mailbox’s Deleted Items folder often looks empty, even though messages have been deleted from it.
If you need to restore a missing email and you think was deleted less than 30 days ago, you should first ask other users with access to the Shared Mailbox if they can check for it in their Deleted Items.
If it's been more than 30 days, contact the IT Service Desk. To speed up your request, if possible, please provide a list of users who had access to the Shared Mailbox during the time period the mail was deleted.
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