Delete emails + restore deleted email messages in Windows Mail

As explained in the previous tutorial, whenever you receive emails, you can file them inside custom folders you create (see how to create an email folder in Windows Mail). But, many of the email messages you receive in Windows Mail will go directly to the trash: since deleting emails is such a common task, we'll show you the two most common ways in which you can do that. First, you will learn how to delete a single email; then, we will show you how to delete several email messages at the same time (a great time saver!) Finally, we will show you how to "un-delete" / restore previously deleted emails.

Delete an email message in Windows Mail

Here's how you can delete the single email message:

• Start by selecting the email in question
• The most intuitive way to delete that message is to heat the Del key on your keyboard
• Another way is to right click on the email, and choose "Delete" from the context menu
• Yet another way to delete a message in Windows Mail is to go under the Edit menu and choose "Delete", which has an associated keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+D
• These are the ways in which you can remove emails from any folder, and move them inside the Deleted Items folder: as implied, this means that the email messages you delete or not actually completely removed from your system right away, but instead moved to that Deleted Items folder, from where they can be restored as you'll see.

Delete multiple email messages at once in Windows Mail

To save time, you can delete several emails at the same time:

• Start by manually selecting the emails you want to delete
• If you want to delete all email messages inside a folder, just go to Edit > Select All, or press to Ctrl+A keyboard shortcut.
• If you want to select only some emails for deletion, hold down the control key (Ctrl) on your keyboard and keep it pressed down, and then click on each of the emails you want to select, one after the other.
• Once you have finished selecting these messages:
  • either hit on the delete key (Del)
  • right-click on any of these messages and choose Delete
  • or choose "Delete" under the Edit menu.

You now know how to delete individual email messages in Windows Mail or multiple emails. After you have deleted these messages, you cannot undo the deletion under the Edit menu for example: read the next section of this tutorial to learn how to restore deleted emails.

Restore deleted email messages in Windows Mail

This is how you un-delete emails in Windows Mail:

• Click on the Deleted Items folder on the left
• Another, quicker, way to go to the Deleted Items folder is to hit Ctrl+Y on your keyboard, and then double-click on Deleted Items.
• Once there, you will see a listing of all email messages currently deleted; if you have deleted any email folders, these will be visible by double-clicking on the triangle on the left of Deleted Items in the left pane, to expand its subfolders.
• Just select all the emails you want to restore, and attract them back to one of the folder you want them in (you can also press Ctrl+Shift+V after having selected the emails to restore, and then pick an email folder in which to move them).