How often do you delete emails before or after a specific date? If you don’t, then you might miss important information that could change your life. Outlook also holds a specific size to cover all emails.
Emails have become the primary way of communication for millions of people around the globe. The problem is that email inboxes get cluttered very easily.
And if you don’t delete old messages regularly, they’ll pile up over time. This can cause problems such as missing important information, wasting time searching through irrelevant messages, and even losing valuable contacts.
You should delete emails before or after certain dates because it helps you organize your mailbox better. For example, you can delete emails older than two weeks, or those from certain contacts.
In this article, we have shared some tips on How to delete emails before/after Specific dates on Outlook.com
Steps to Delete all emails before or after a date in Outlook?
Do you have to delete every single email before a date? No, but it is not normal for you to have 300 emails in your inbox, right? And if you don’t check your email every day, then you will definitely be in trouble when it comes to deleting emails.
To delete all emails before or after a date in Outlook.com follow the steps:
Searching email received/send on a specific date, date range, or before or after a date is really very easy.
How to search for a mail by date?
You remember the date and you had a clear idea of what email you are searching for, first, you must click on the search bar at the top of the screen.
Enter the date, for instance, “received:18-02-2022“, when you do, Outlook starts searching your mailbox for messages with the search terms you entered.
Keep the format of the date along with (received:), which will indicate Outlook to search email received on that specific date.
Step 1 – Open Outlook.com from the browser and log into your account.
Step 2 – Click on the Settings gear icon from the top right corner of the screen after signing in. Then, click on the ‘View all Outlook settings’ option available at the bottom.
Step 3 – The outlook setting panel opens, Click on General >> Storage
Step 4 – From the right-hand side panel, here you can find all the folders in your mailbox with current consumed capacity, Select the folder (for instance Archive).
Step 5 – Click on the related Empty button, and select the time range, by default 4 ranges are already given:
- All
- 3 months and older
- 6 months and older
- 12 months and older
Step 6 – Finally, select the option accordingly to your requirement, Then, the Final confirmation window pops up, click the OK button to confirm.
That way, you can find all the folders in your mailbox. Choose a folder you want to delete emails from. After that, click on the associated empty button and choose a time range.
Delete Emails Before/After Certain Date using Instant Search Feature
Using the Instant Search feature, you can easily find out all emails received before or after a specific date, and then delete those emails in the Outlook application.
Outlook can search email messages by a specific date, date range, and before/after a certain date very easily.
How to search a mail by date?
First, you must click on the search bar at the top of the screen, in your Outlook’s search bar type…” date:dd/mm/yyyy” without the quotation marks, for instance, “received:18-02-2022“, keep the date format along with the word (received:), when you do, Outlook starts searching your mailbox for messages with the search terms you entered.
You will get the result of all emails received on that specific date. But here in this context, we need to find out emails before or after a certain date range.
How Does Outlook Find Email Before/After Certain Date?
The question of how to search email before/after a certain range is not an easy one to answer. While Outlook can display all the emails you have ever sent and received.
Type the date you need to find emails before that date along with less than sign ‘<‘ & equal to sign ‘=’ from your keyboard. for instance [received: <=2022/1/1]
You will get the result of emails received on or before the specified date.
In case you need to find the emails after a certain date, Type the date you need to find emails after that date along with less than sign ‘>’ & equal to sign ‘=’ from your keyboard. for instance [received: >=2022/1/1]
In all the above methods, you get the list of required emails, to delete them all, select all search emails using Ctrl + A, and press the Delete key to remove them.
Just like that!
Find and Delete Emails Before/After Certain Dates Using Sort Feature
If you are using Outlook as your email client, it is possible to sort emails before/after a certain date using the Sort feature in Outlook. I will show you how to sort emails before/after a certain date in Outlook.
- Select the folder (for instance: Inbox) from which you need to select email before/after a certain date and remove it.
- Click on the View tab, reading pane from layout >> Click Off
Now you can see the entire list of emails clearly without any restriction.
- Next step, click on the column header of received and sort the email messages by received date in descending order.
Your list is ready, now you need to select specified emails:
- In the first case, if you need to delete emails after 01/02/2022 to date, Go to the emails received dated 01/02/2022, and press Ctrl + Shift + Home keys to select all messages received after 01/02/2022, Now simply hit the delete key to remove all selected emails.
- On the other hand, you can reverse the process, if you need to delete emails before 01/02/2022, Go to the emails received dated 01/02/2022, and press Ctrl + Shift + End keys to select all messages received before 01/02/2022, Now simply hit the delete key to remove all selected emails.
This Sort feature is a great way to locate emails you want to delete. In the future, when you want to delete an email, you can use this to locate and delete it.
Try New Search Folder method to Delete Emails Before/After a Specific Date
If you’re looking for ways to delete emails from your Outlook, and if you’re not confident about how to use the Clear and Mark Deleted Items options, you’re probably wondering if there’s a better way.
There is! You can use a new Outlook feature called the Search Folder Method to Delete Emails Before/After a Specific Date.
This method is slightly different from the above methods, here is the step-by-step process to do it!
- Click on the folder tab >> New Search Folder
- From the New Search Folder dialog box, click on Create a Custom Search Folder, and then click the Choose button.
- Custom Search Folder dialog box appears, enter a name for this new search folder in the Name box, and click the Criteria button.
- That open Search Folder Criteria, Click the Advanced tab
- Click the Field >> All Mail fields >> Received
- The next step is to select the condition, click on the condition dropdown list, and you find multiple options, select ‘on or before or ‘on or after’ according to your requirement.
- In the Value box, enter the base date, for instance, 01/02/2022, the result would be different if you chose after or before.
- Once you enter the date in the value box, click the Add to List button.
- Your criteria are added, and you will check the inputs in the “Find items that match these criteria” box.
- Click Ok until all dialog boxes close.
You can find your new folder available in the Navigation Pane, press the Ctrl + A keys to select all messages in this search folder, and then press the Delete key to delete these messages.
Or you can select the folder, right-click on it, and hit the ‘delete all’ button.
Final Words
In conclusion, if you need to delete emails in bulk before or after a specific date in Outlook. Create a new contact for the date in the past or future.
Then create the rule to have it move those emails to that date.
All these three approaches result in the same methodology, you can try according to your choice.
If you want to know how to delete emails before and after a specified date in Outlook, you can use the tips in this article.
In summary, I hope that this blog post has given you a comprehensive understanding of how to clear emails from your Outlook inbox before and after specific dates.
If you have any questions, please feel free to post them in the comments section. I will try to address it as soon as possible.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Does deleting sent emails free up space in Outlook?
No, deleting sent emails does not free up space in Outlook because the email messages are stored in Outlook’s Sent Items folder.
Is clean email safe to use?
Yes. Microsoft is committed to providing the highest levels of privacy and security for our customers, including when you use clean email, and we’re due to unveil new privacy and security initiatives in the coming weeks.
Is it better to block or unsubscribe in Outlook?
It’s better to block an email address in Outlook if you want to prevent it from sending you any more messages. When you block a sender, that sender’s messages won’t be delivered to your inbox.
You can also choose to block an address if you want to ignore future messages and replies from that address.
What is a ghost email in Outlook?
A ghost email is the ability to create an email address that is never received. It is typically used for email addresses that are not being used.
