If you are an Office 365 user, or you just have a Microsoft email account, you have probably used Outlook.com for your email. If you do, you may at some point run out of space in your mailbox. Manually deleting emails can be a pain, and some may not like the idea of a retention policy casually deleting their emails without prompt. Fortunately, there is another way to easily mass delete Outlook.com emails.
Note: These instructions will not work with all types of Microsoft email accounts.
Discovering Outlook.com space usage
Let’s start by checking how much space we have available. Log in to Outlook and click the “Settings” button at the top of the page.
The Outlook settings cog button.
Click “View All Outlook Settings” at the bottom of the settings sidebar. This will display a settings panel.
The “View all Outlook settings” hyperlink.
On the sidebar, click “General”, then “Storage”, as below.
The storage details panel.
Mass deleting Outlook.com emails
Now that we know how much space we have available, the fun part begins! Click here to open up the Outlook Mailbox Cleanup tool.
The cleanup tool will appear, showing your current mailbox usage and where that data is stored.
The mailbox cleanup panel.
Select which mailbox you would like to delete emails from by clicking the trash can next to its name. You will be presented with a dropdown menu, allowing you to select which emails you wish to delete from that mailbox. I went for every email 12 months old and older.
Selecting the deletion period within the dropdown menu.
A prompt will appear, allowing you to confirm the action. If you’re satisfied, go ahead and click the “Yes” button.
Et voilà! You have successfully cleaned up your mailbox, or at least part of it. The cleanup page will confirm this with a small tick mark next to the mailbox that you cleaned.
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