Volume 30 Issue 30

Issue Date: October 2, 2025 « Previous Issue | Next Issue »

The following articles were included in our Exchange Messaging Outlook (EMO) newsletter published on October 2, 2025.

EMO is a weekly publication. To receive your own copy of EMO by email, subscribe here.

Support Exchange Messaging Outlook Sponsors

Increase Your Productivity!

ReliefJet Essentials for Outlook is a set of more than 160 tools for performing a wide range of tasks in Outlook: processing email messages, contacts, appointments, meetings, tasks and other Outlook items.

ReliefJet Essentials for Outlook

Today's Highlights »

Move Deleted Items to Another Folder Automatically
iCloud Calendar (or contacts) Stopped Syncing?
Make a List of All Email Addresses Who Sent Mail?
Contact Lists in Outlook.com

Move Deleted Items to Another Folder Automatically

A user asked how they could move deleted messages out of the Deleted Items folder, to avoid the automatic 30 day deletion by their mail server.

The easiest way to do this is to not delete the messages, only deleting obvious spam and junk mail.

If you are deleting mail because you want a clean mailbox, use the Archive folder instead. If you click icons to delete mail, click the icon that looks like a file drawer instead. Keyboarders will use the Backspace key, not Delete key.

Either of the above methods work with any versions of Outlook.

Another option is using a Quick Step, which works in new, classic, and web version of Outlook. The advantage is you can choose the folder to move mail to, rather than moving to the Archive folder. Quick Steps can be assigned keyboard shortcuts in the form of CTRL + SHIFT + [number: 1 - 9], which is not necessarily the easiest shortcut to hit.

If you are using classic Outlook, you could use Auto Archive to move the messages to a new PST. VBA is also an option but requires you to lower the macro security.

PowerShell can move the messages and does not require changing the security settings. It can also run from Task Scheduler, avoiding the need to run it manually. If your mail server automatically deletes items in the trash folder that are older than 30 days, you only need to run the PowerShell once every week or two to insure you don't miss any messages. You will need to have classic Outlook open before the PowerShell runs.

Because the Deleted items folder can contain calendar and contact items, PowerShell checks to see if the item is a mail item. You can use this PowerShell to move messages to any folder if you change the folder designations.

$outlook = New-Object -ComObject Outlook.Application
$namespace = $outlook.GetNamespace("MAPI")

$fromFolder = $namespace.GetDefaultFolder(3) # Deleted Items folder
$moveto = $fromFolder.Parent.Folders("Hold Deleted For Review")
$items = $fromFolder.Items
$EmailCount = $items.count

for ($i = $EmailCount; $i -ge 1; $i--) {

# Get the current item
$item = $items.Item($i)

# Check if the item is a MailItem
if ($item -is [Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.MailItem]) {
$item.Move($moveto)
}
}

The PowerShell and instructions to use PowerShell are at Move Deleted Items to Another Folder Automatically

iCloud Calendar (or Contacts) Stopped Syncing?

I’ve had several people come to me this week with problems syncing their iCloud calendar. Some were using classic Outlook and the iCloud add-in, while others were using new Outlook.

The solution is more or less the same for either app: remove the account and add it back.

In new Outlook this is straight forward: Remove the account. If you have the account set up in new Outlook on another computer or on Outlook mobile, you can try the option to remove the account from this computer. If it still won’t sync, remove it again and when asked if you want to remove it from all devices, say Yes. This clears the mailbox cache on the Microsoft cloud servers.

I usually recommend waiting a few minutes before adding the account back.

If you remove the account from all devices, you’ll also need to add it back on this devices (but won’t be asked if you want to remove it from all devices.) Note: that option doesn't actually remove the account from the other devices, so you'll need to remove it before adding it back, but deleting the cache from the server breaks the sync to the other devices.

If you are using classic Outlook and the iCloud add-in stops syncing, sign out of the iCloud app and sign back in. Turning off Outlook sync and the re-enabling it won’t work, because that doesn't reset the iCloud data file in Outlook.

Make a List of All Email Addresses Who Sent Mail?

A user wanted to make a list of all addresses he’s received mail from. “I would like a list of all addresses who sent me mail. I know I can open each message and copy and paste the addresses, but it would take me forever. “

That is possible and actually easy if you have classic Outlook: export the mail to a CSV. When you use the Export wizard, you can clear the default field mapping and export just the From name and From address fields. If you are exporting the Sent Items folder, export the To name and To address fields.

If you file mail in folders, you’ll need to export each folder separately to a new CSV.

1. Select the folder you want to export then go to File > Open & Export > Import/Export.
2. Select Export to a file then click Next.
3. Select Comma Separated Values, click Next.
4. The folder you have selected in Outlook should be selected in the Choose the folder you want to export from dialog. If not, select it. Click Next.
5. Click Browse to choose the location and enter a name for the exported file. Click Next.
6. On the next screen, click Map Custom Fields button. If the button is grayed out, click to add a check to the box to the left of “Export "Email messages" from folder: [name]”
7. Click the Clear Map to remove default fields.
8. Drag the name and address fields to the right side of the dialog to add them to the export.

After the export is finished, open the file in Excel and run Remove Duplicates. It’s in the Data Tools section on the Data tab.

If you just want to see the list of addresses in classic Outlook, you can install a custom form field (*.CFG) that exposes the Sender address field in the message list. You can use this in custom views and select all, copy, and paste the list into Excel or other application.

The CFG file and instructions are in this article: How to display the sender's email address in Outlook