Auto-Deleting Emails in Microsoft Outlook

After Gmail, Microsoft Outlook is the most popular email provider out there. Organizations love Microsoft Outlook for its close integration with the Office 365 suite. As for consumers, Microsoft has done a commendable job with storage, cross-platform availability, and features.

The Outlook app is available on iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and the Web. The company acquired the popular Acompli app and the Sunrise calendar to accelerate the development of the mobile app. In short, there are enough reasons to use Outlook for personal use over its competitors. But with only 15GB of free storage, you may run out of storage. With the growing trend of junk marketing emails and spam, it’s harder than ever to filter relevant emails from junk.

Microsoft offers Focused Inbox functionality but is limited to filtering relevant emails for the user. Another useful addition is Outlook Rules. It is the Outlook version of IFTTT. With rules, multiple automations can be created to archive certain emails or move them to delete mails section.

In this post, we will guide you through the Outlook Rules function and create some rules to automatically delete and automatically archive emails from Outlook. The post will also cover another Outlook bonus trick to unsubscribe from irrelevant emails in one place. Lets start.

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Create Auto-Delete Rule from Email

First, the Rules functionality is only available in Outlook Windows/Mac and Outlook on the Web. In this article, I will talk about the steps for the web version of Outlook.

Stage 1: Open Outlook web and sign in using Microsoft account credentials.

Step 2: Select an irrelevant email and open it.

Stage 3: Tap the three-dot menu and select Create Rule.

Step 4: Create a rule to move messages from sender to Deleted Items.

After that, all emails from the sender are moved directly to the deleted inbox. You can still access them from the Deleted Items menu in folders.

Create Auto-Delete Rules from Outlook Settings

The scenario above moves all emails from sender to items deleted, but what if someone wants to delete emails with certain subjects or certain keywords from the message body?

For example, I don’t want to receive loan offers, Coronavirus updates or other marketing junk from my bank. However, I want my monthly statement and credit card bill to come to my e-mail. So, how are such rules established? Follow the steps below.

Stage 1: Open Outlook web and go to Settings.

Step 2: View all Outlook settings and the custom settings menu will appear.

Stage 3: Select Rules and select Add new rule.

Step 4: Let’s call it Bank Rules and add a condition.

Step 5: Add keywords that are no longer relevant to you, such as Credit, EMI, etc. I added the message terms.

Step 6: Create a rule to move all emails to the delete folder and hit the save button.

Now, when you receive emails containing Credit, EMI or Important keywords, they will be automatically moved to the delete folder.

Let’s create another useful rule. Shall we do it? Every company out there is sending users emails about the Coronavirus. While I appreciate your efforts, sometimes it’s exhausting to read the news about the deadly virus every day. With the help of Outlook Rules, you can automatically delete these mails before they reach you.

Stage 1: Open Outlook web and go to Settings > Mail > Rules.

Step 2: Let’s name the new rule ‘Coronavirus’ and add the conditions.

Stage 3: Add conditions such as the message body contains the keyword ‘Coronavirus’, ‘COVID-19’ and then move these emails to the delete folder.

Outlook Rules is a powerful function and the possibilities are endless. Here’s how I use it. Whenever I’m on a vacation trip I create a rule to move all incoming emails to a ‘While Traveling’ folder and there is never any downtime during family time.

Unsubscribe from Irrelevant Email Senders

The auto-delete function is useful when you want to filter the relevant emails from fake ones. But what if you want to completely stop receiving emails from the sender. You can always use the unsubscribe option in the email.

But finding that little unsubscribe button on every post can be time-consuming and tedious. Fortunately, with Outlook Web, you can see all email senders in one place with an unsubscribe button.

Stage 1: Open Outlook web and go to Settings.

Step 2: Go to Mail > Subscriptions.

Stage 3: Here you will see the list of email senders with a large unsubscribe button.

Step 4: Unsubscribe the unnecessary from the menu and you can also tap the three-dot menu to block the sender.

I use this feature every quarter to remove irrelevant emails from the list.

Use Outlook Like a Professional

Microsoft Outlook includes an excellent Rules function. You can use it to automatically delete incoming mails, automatically archive them, move them to different folders for a certain period of time, and even unsubscribe from the junk sender list from a single menu. The solution mentioned above worked like a miracle for us. Did you find a different solution that doesn’t involve any third party apps?

Next: Outlook allows you to create custom signature for better personalization. Read the post below to learn how to set it up.