Microsoft Outlook is the most popular email provider for a large network of users, following Google’s Gmail (email service provider). Because of its convenient and direct relationship to the widely utilized Office 365, the business and enterprise community finds a lot of value in the spectrum of varied features given by Microsoft Outlook. Outlook provides a variety of categorization options to assist users in filtering email-based content. The auto-delete option is useful for distinguishing between real and fraudulent emails. What if you don’t want the sender to send you any more emails? In Outlook, you can easily regulate those features and set up auto-deletion of emails after a certain number of days. Follow the steps below to see how.
How to automatically delete emails in Outlook after X days:
- First, open your Outlook desktop app.
- Click on “file.”
- In “file” click on “options.”
- Now go to “Advanced.”
- In “Advanced” click on “Auto Archive Settings.“
- To your liking, set “Run AutoArchive every X days.”
- Check the box for Prompt before “AutoArchive” runs.
- Choose “Permanently delete old items.”
- Click on “OK.”
From a single menu, you can auto-delete, auto-archive, and transfer incoming emails to different folders for a certain length of time, as well as unsubscribe from undesired senders. The aforementioned strategy has shown to be effective in guaranteeing that the email is automatically deleted from the user’s inbox after a specified period of time.
Following the methods above, you’ll be able to delete emails from specific people after a set number of days. The auto-archive option is set to erase emails from the sender after they expire, thus when the email expires, it will be automatically deleted. Given that it’s after “X amount of days,” there’s no straightforward way to set up an auto-deletion option in Outlook.
This can be a quick and painless way for any company that already utilizes archiving to lower the overall number of objects in Exchange and the amount of disc space their email takes up, boosting performance and reliability.
In the auto-archive tab, as previously indicated, select the number of days an email can be kept. If you set this to 27 days, for example, any emails older than that will be destroyed. You’ll want this to be instantaneous, so make sure it’s set to 0 days. That way, when the email expires, it will be deleted right away.
How to automatically delete emails in Outlook after X days from a specific sender
Another approach to have mail-based material removed automatically is to set up a retention policy that deletes the email after a certain period of time has passed. Retention regulations, on the other hand, are useless when applied to a single user. When compared to the approach previously described, the possibilities of mistakes accruing are much larger. Retention rules are mailbox commands issued by mailbox administrators that govern the flow of mail and how material relevant to your message is handled.
Another option is to use PowerShell to build a mail command rule. To configure the emails to delete after a particular length of time, you’ll need to utilize a sequence of functional text-based instructions. It is not possible to establish rules via the Outlook mail server; instead, you must use Microsoft Exchange or PowerShell. If the command is not put up correctly, communications issues might arise, much like with the retention policies technique. You must verify that the rules you write are not misspelled and that they are applied to the people from whom you want to mail to be automatically removed.
Why would you want to delete emails automatically in Outlook?
Users’ email messages are successful at enabling high-quality and reliable communication. However, once a certain period of time has passed, certain users’ sent emails may no longer be relevant. As a result, keeping them in the inbox may diminish productivity and bother the user because they will have to constantly scroll and look for important material. In this situation mail deleted automatically after a given length of time is effective.
Auto erasing is useful for event organizers who may want customers to provide event-related information, but once the event is over and the final count is complete, the emails are no longer relevant, thus enabling them to be automatically removed will help event managers keep their inventory organized. You may delete the emails manually, but this is time-intensive and raises the risk of human mistakes, resulting in the deletion of important mail-based material.
How to automatically delete emails in Outlook after X days
Step by step breakdown:
- First, sign into Outlook.

You will need to sign in with the desktop version of Outlook for the following process to work. The best way to get the Outlook app is with a Microsoft 365 subscription. You can then download all available apps by signing in at
Office.com. Once there, click on “Install apps” in the top right corner of the window. Then, select “Premium Microsoft 365 apps” from the dropdown list.
- Go to “file” in the toolbar at the top.

As mentioned above the file option and the application version are the only ways to edit the add-ins as the web version does not directly sync add-in data with your desktop as there is no connected output, unlike the application version.
- From there visit “options.”

Options are located at the bottom of the menu bar on the left side.
The “Advanced” options section is where the majority of your main Outlook features are located.
- In “Advanced” click on Auto Archive Settings.

- To your liking, set “Run AutoArchive every X days.”
- Check the box for Prompt before “AutoArchive” runs.
- Choose “Permanently delete old items.”

- Click on “OK.”
That’s it for this Blog thank you for taking time out to read our content, please feel free to email our team about how it went if you followed the steps or if you need more help with the questions we answered in this Blog.