Outlook Express Emails Going into Deleted Items Folder

This has been the week for some weird problems. Whether users have opened dialog boxes and accidentally clicked on the wrong things or "IE7 did it to me," I've read of some subscriber problems have been very frustrating. Take this one from Louise, for example:

Terry,
   I have somehow clicked on something this morning, and now my messages that should go in my "inbox" are going into my "deleted message" box.
   I have tried different things, and I am at a loss as to how to fix this. Please help. Thanks in advance. Louise Langley..
   Oh I have DSL Windows XP. OUTLOOK EXPRESS for my email.

I wrote back to Louise to say that it appeared that she had created a new rule (in Outlook Express) to handle incoming emails.

Unfortunately, it sounds like she accidentally set up the rule take all incoming email and put it into the Deleted Items folder.

You can check your email filters that you have set up in Outlook Express by using the following steps:

1. Start Outlook Express
2. From the menu bar, click on Tools
3. Message Rules, and then
4. Mail

At this point, you will be at Message Rules dialog box. For emails, stay on the Mail Rules tab. Then, click on the first mail rule (in my case, this has the default name "New Mail Rule #1" and review the Rule Description (the conditions and actions) in the box below.

This will show you the email message handling rules that are currently set up. Click on each and check them to see if they say what you intended them to say. The newest rule, by default, is at the end of the list — so that's probably were the problem can be found.

As you can see in the example, the Rule Description box shows that I have created a rule that says that, if the From line contains "Spammer McSpam" (you'd put in the real name, if you were trying to create a rule like this), then Outlook Express is to delete the email. In other words, it would transfer the offending email into the "Deleted Items" folder.

It appears that Louise had selected "Delete it" in the #2 box -- but had accidentally clicked on All Messages in the #1 box.

If she did that, the resulting rule, as you can see below, says "Apply this rule after the message arrives: For all messages, Delete it."

Link to this page — just add this code to your web page!

<a href="http://www.terryscomputertips.com/computers/outlook-express-emails-going-into-deleted-items.php">Outlook Express Emails Going into Deleted Items Folder</a>

Copyright © 2006-2007 Terry A. Stockdale. All rights reserved.