[Eternal Student (OP)]

Hi.

I've got an email account operated by Microsoft and I tend to use Outlook to view and manage my emails.
I couldn't send/receive anything because my email folder was full.   I've been a bit lazy in making deletions.
Anyway... the solution (you would have thought) was to delete some old emails.
I did that.
Still couldn't receive any mail,  apparently there still isn't any space.
Ah...ha....  I found the deleted emails in the "deleted items" folder.... so they were still there and still taking up space.  They wouldn't be deleted for 30 days.
So I selected all the mail in the deleted items folder and chose to have it deleted immediately.
That should work you would think.
It didn't.... there still isn't any space.
I did some research and it seems this is the system that Mcrosoft employ:


email folders.jpg (122.29 kB . 905x887 - viewed 634 times)

There are 3 different folders for deleted emails.   The first is called the "deleted items" folder and this makes sense and email in here is easily recovered.
   The second is called the "deletions" folder,  it's a folder where stuff is... idk....  more gone than it was but still not gone in any way.... and could be recovered.
    The third is called the "purges" folder,  and it's where the system is declaring "I'm serious, this time, this stuff will be gone" and you have your very last chance to go in and recover that email.
    After the purges folder the stuff is actually deleted.
    There is a delay of at least 14 days between movement to each new folder.

I can delete an email and then empty the deleted items folder.... so I can push stuff as far as the  "reasonably gone folder" but no further.   Only the system will push it into the  "seriously gone folder" when it's good and ready (that'll be14 days later) and it will only delete it from here another 14 days after that.   

So, unless there is something I can do to speed up the movement to the "actually gone state",   then I can't receive any email for about 1 month.

Any help or advice would be appreciated.    Otherwise, I'll just have a moan and ask who invented this system of  the many stages of deleted-ness for emails?

Best Wishes.

[paul cotter]

Computer technology will melt your brain, as it has done to me. Not much help but I could not resist.

[Halc]

This reply will not help, unless you can find a way to repartition things to add space, if only temporarily, to your outlook folder. Outlook probably uses its own space (not your computer space) to store it all, so this is likely not an option unless there's a way to purchase it.

Outlook is a pig, and I've only used it professionally (employer email accounts).
Outlook is also user friendly, allowing you to select thousands of emails at once.
My yahoo account has 4500 unread emails, and I do mass-delete some of that now and then. It won't tell me how many there are total. My gmail account has 40000 emails in it, all marked read but few actually read. I have no intention of deleting most of that since it is fairly free of spam.  I use about 3% of my available capacity there.

At a time, my employer noticed that a considerable amount of space was consumed by those that tended to not clean their inboxes. So they offered a monetary prize to whoever deleted the most space from their accounts in a given month.  This resulted in a massive increase in space consumption, as people would send themselves huge emails, wait until the 'before' snapshot was taken, and then delete them, in attempt to collect the prize. The idea was to max out your box every other month.

The monetary award policy died soon thereafter.

[alancalverd]

I have never used outlook, but it has infected my emails! A couple of weeks ago people started getting delivery failure notices from outlook when they emailed me, asserting that my email address was not accessible, even though I received the mail. I complained to my service provider (btinternet) who, of course , did nothing and cancelled my complaint.

It's almost as bad as Teams.

[Eternal Student (OP)]

Hi.

    I've sort of solved the problem.   I don't seem to be able to make messages delete any faster and have had to purchase more storage space to make things work.   Maybe this is the only reason Microsoft have this elaborate mult-staged deletion process.    Wait until the box is full, then you know the customer is using the service and probably quite dependant on it.   Then you can sting them for more money which they will either have to pay or else be without email for a month.

Best Wishes.

[Eternal Student (OP)]

Hi.

Can it be temporary?

   Yes but I'm locked in now for a few months (I paid for a year).

    It could be worse......  When the subscription fee isn't paid next year, they may want to check the account hasn't been compromised and the details they had on me were correct.   So they could encrypt all the emails they have on their storage and ask for a fee of  1 000 GBP  to be paid before they release the encryption key.

   That was supposed to be humorous but I'll bookmark this post for next year, just in case.

Best Wishes.

[Zer0]

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/reduce-the-size-of-your-mailbox-and-outlook-data-files-pst-and-ost-e4c6a4f1-d39c-47dc-a4fa-abe96dc8c7ef

ps - Hope that Subscription plan ain't one of Those AutoPayOut annually without informing or confirming or consent from the Client types.
(lol)

[nicephotog]

Use someones' account to message the "email server administrator".
That is actually what you should do in such situations,
second talk to your boss and the server administrator holding the particular software you use to find a solution to jamming and clogging bottle-necking blockage.
It's a direct server admin problem (to solve), you do not ever solve such problems yourself, almost no multi person organization ever allows operation or manipulation of server machine and server software by a user !!!!
you are a user and simply delete anything under the pretext everything will be ok.