Several users noticed the Delete button was missing when a message was selected in the Inbox:
I recently switched email accounts and the Delete button is disabled and some of my messages are missing. The Delete key on the keyboard will delete messages, only the Delete button in the Home ribbon and the right-click menu for selected e-mail(s) is disabled.
This is the result of exporting an IMAP data file to a pst file or opening IMAP pst files in Outlook. The folders retain certain IMAP features, one of which is the Delete button doesn't work as expected. (In IMAP, it purges.) To fix it, you need to edit the Inbox folder using MFCMAPI and change the PR_CONTAINER_CLASS to IPF.Note.
- Get MFCMAPI . If you have 64 bit office, you need 64 bit MFCMAPI.
- Open MFCMAPI, go to Session, Logon
- Select your profile
- Double-click on the affected data store.
- Expand Root - Mailbox
- Expand Top of Information Store or IPM_Subtree
- Select Inbox
- Look for PR_CONTAINER_CLASS in the right pane, double-click on it.
- Change IPF.IMAP to IPF.Note then click OK to close the dialog.
- Repeat for each folder that was exported from an IMAP data file.
- When you are finished, close the MFCMAPI window, click Session, Logoff on the last MFCMAPI window.
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19 Comments on "The Delete button is disabled in Outlook's Inbox"
Thanks for posting this. My Delete button was grayed out. It wasn't always like that, but after following your instruction my delete button works again!
Many thanks for the very helpful article; I successfully restore the delete button to use. Tim
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! After moving/combining thousands of emails from Gmail IMAP to POP3, I started moving emails from the POP3 inbox to folders marked as IMAP and they were 'disappearing'. I thought they were lost forever. I changed the view and it worked, but this permanently and properly fixed all of those subfolders, so that I can use any view I want.
That was a legend fix - thank you!
wrong, i never exported anything
I followed the instructions and changed all affected folders from "IMAP" to "Note". However, when I re-opened Outlook 2013, affected folders still showed "IMAP". I thought I had the problem fixed. So frustrated :(
it all seems fine. i had 9 mailboxes, and all bar 1 were exported from o2k13, the other being 2k7, all downloaded from gmail via imap. some of them had the property, and had it wrong, and others just didnt have it. i fixed the ones that were wrong with your script, and couldnt do anything with the other ones so i imported them. it seems to all be fine so far....
hi diane, thanks for your reply. yes, its all visible and doesnt appear to have any issues. thats great but it also worries me as the pr_container class property is missing. im guessing if the property doesnt exist then maybe outlook decides its a mail folder by default?
When you create a new pst, the inbox, sent, deleted probably won't have it but everything else should. At least that is how it is in Outlook 2013 - I haven't checked exported pst files or pst files from older versions of outlook. I have some older pst around here somewhere, I'll check them - I know the container class problem is most common with newer versions of outlook so it's possible it's due to a change in the data file structure used with imap.
As long as the pst works correctly in Outlook, I wouldn't worry about it but would do a test import and see if it imports ok. (I fully expect it will.)
Is the exported mail visible? Are the views on the folders the IMAP views? If the exported mail does not have the IMAP views, you don't need to change anything. To the best of my recollection, Outlook 2007 generally exported IMAP correctly.