Often you may want to delete emails in Outlook that are older than a specific time period, such as 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, etc.
This is easy to do by using the following steps:
1. Click the File tab in Outlook.
2. Click the Tools dropdown arrow, then click Mailbox Cleanup.
3. Click Find items older than and specify a number of days.
4. Click Ctrl + A to select all emails, then right click and click Delete.
The following example shows how to follow these steps in practice.
Step 1: Click the File Tab
To delete all emails older than a specific time period, you first need to click the File tab along the top ribbon in Outlook.
Step 2: Click Mailbox Cleanup
Next, click the Tools icon, then click Mailbox Cleanup:
Step 3: Click “Find items older than”
Next, click Find items older than and type a specific number of days.
For this example, we’ll type 3 days and then click Find:
Step 4: Delete All Emails Older than Specific Time Period
A list of all emails older than 3 days will appear.
Simply click on any of the emails, then type Ctrl + A to select all emails. Then right click and click Delete to delete all of the emails:
A message will appear that tells you the emails will be permanently deleted and ask if you want to proceed.
Once you click Yes, all of the emails older than 3 days old will be deleted.
Note: We chose to delete emails older than 3 days in this particular tutorial but you can replace 3 with whatever number of days you would like to delete emails that are even older.
Related Tutorials
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in Outlook:
Outlook: How to Search Emails by Date Range
Outlook: How to Search for Multiple Keywords in Emails
Outlook: How to Search for Emails with Attachments
