Order Outlook Deleted Items folder by date deleted

If you’ve ever deleted an email by accident and had to hunt it down in your Outlook Deleted Items folder to recover it, this tip is for you! You can have Outlook sort your Deleted Items folder by date modified so that the items show up in the order of the date they were deleted, rather than the date they were received, which is the default.

Too many times I’ve accidentally deleted the wrong email from my inbox because a new email came in and pushed all the emails in the inbox list down right when I was about to click the trash can icon on an email. By changing the sorting, that email will always be at the top of the Deleted Items folder, making it easy to recover.

Pro tip: You can also hit Ctrl + Z to undo the deletion.

Also, sometimes I have emails sit in my inbox or other folders for days, weeks, or months, and I purposely delete them. Then a few hours or days later I realize I need them back. It’s much easier to recall the approximate date and time that I deleted the email than it is to remember what day I received the email on, making it easier to find in my Deleted Items. I know there’s also the search functionality, but sometimes you can’t recall text that was unique to the email to narrow the search results down enough.

I prefer my Deleted Items sorted this way, and perhaps you will too.

Happy coding emailing!