How to recover items that have been hard deleted in Outlook (246153)

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Warning If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.
When you delete items from a folder in a mailbox, the items first are shifted to the Deleted Items folder in the mailbox. You can then delete these items from the Deleted Items folder. This functionality protects you from accidentally deleting an item. After you delete the items from the Deleted Items folder, these items can still be recovered if the Exchange Server 5.5 computer has been configured to retain deleted items. To determine if the server has been configured in this manner, open the properties of the public and private information store objects under the Server object.

For additional information, click the following article number about how to configure the server to retain deleted items to view the article about how to configure the server to retain deleted items in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: It is also possible to permanently delete items without first moving them to the Deleted Items folder. This procedure is called a "hard delete" as opposed to a "soft delete".

Messages are hard deleted in the following scenarios:

• You are using Microsoft Outlook, and you press SHIFT+DELETE to delete a message.
• You are working an Internet Message Access Protocol 4 (IMAP4) client or another type of client that does not first move the message to the Deleted Items folder.

By default, the Recover Deleted Items functionality is only enabled on the Deleted Items folder in a user's private folders; items that are hard deleted cannot be recovered. To enable the Recover Deleted Items functionality on mail folders other than Deleted Items (for example, for Sent Items, Drafts, Outbox and Inbox folders), you must make the following changes to the registry:

1. Start Registry Editor (Regedt32.exe).
2. Locate and click the following key in the registry:

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Exchange\Client\Options

3. On the Edit menu, click Add Value, and then add the following registry value:

   Value name: DumpsterAlwaysOn
   Data type: DWORD
   Value data: 1

4. Quit Registry Editor.

You can use an administrator's computer or a user's computer to make this change to the registry. After you change the registry, start Outlook, and then click Deleted Item Recovery on the Tools menu. A list of items that have been hard deleted during the retention time set on the server is displayed.

If you are an administrator, you can set this functionality for all user workstations. To do so, use your computer to change the registry for all user workstations, and then open the affected user's mailbox as an additional mailbox. You can then recover deleted items from the user's mailbox mail folders.

Note If you are an administrator, and you want to open another user's mailbox to recover items in the user's private folders, your Windows NT account must have User permissions for that user's mailbox object. You must also add that user's mailbox to your own profile:

1. Open Control Panel, and then double-click Mail.
2. Open the Services properties, and then double-click Microsoft Exchange Server.
3. Click the Advanced tab, and then click Add to add the mailbox to your profile.

The Recover Deleted Items functionality in Outlook 98, Outlook 2000, Outlook 2002

In Outlook 98, the Recover Deleted Items functionality is available only for mail folders (for example, Deleted Items, Drafts, Inbox, Outbox and Sent Items folders). Therefore, items that are hard-deleted from non-mail folders (for example, Contacts and Notes folders) cannot be recovered. However, in Outlook 2000 and Outlook 2002, the Recover Deleted Items functionality is available for all folders; if you make the registry change described earlier in this article, you can recover hard-deleted items from non-mail folders.

For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: