It is easy to accidentally delete emails from time to time. However, it is possible to recover some emails that are considered missing forever. For example, deleted emails in Office 365 can be recovered if certain conditions are met.
The methods described below are more likely to work if you try to recover the email at the time it was deleted. The longer you wait, the less likely recovery will work.
Deleted Items folder
The first thing you need to do is check if the deleted email is in your Deleted Items folder. Once signed in to Office 365, go to your email app. Go to the Deleted Items folder and find the letter.
If found, right-click it and use the Move function to select the target destination (for example, your Inbox) so that you can restore it.
If the email you are looking for is not there, you can try to recover deleted items. Right-click the Deleted Items folder and select Recover Deleted Items.
A pop-up window will show you a list of emails that have been permanently deleted. Find your target email address. If you find it, right-click it and select Repair. You can also select multiple emails and recover them all in one go.
– /
The recovered emails will appear in your Inbox.
Get ready as the Office 365 admin
The Office 365 administrator has another option for recovering lost emails. He or she can do this in Exchange Online or with In-Place eDiscovery and retention.
Please note that this method will only work if the emails have not been completely removed from the mailbox. They should still be in the Recoverable Items folder.
As an administrator, you can also recover emails from deleted users if 30 days have not passed since the account was deactivated.
Sign in to Office 365 as an administrator. Go to the Exchange admin portal Compliance Management In-Place eDiscovery and retention.
This will open the Exchange admin center. By clicking the plus sign, you can add options to help you search by email. You can search by name, add keywords, date email, email recipients, and more.
When done, click Done. This will start a search for the deleted email.
When Office 365 completes the process, it displays the results. Check each entry and see if it contains the emails you want by clicking “Preview Search Results”.
When you find the emails, click the export button and select a destination. The selected item will be exported as a PST file.
After the export is complete, open the exported file to view its contents and recover lost emails.
Third-party solutions
Office 365 built-in solutions are basic and have their limitations. You are limited in time (14 to 30 days). In addition, emails that have been deleted from the Recoverable Items folder can no longer be moved back to the Inbox.
This is why some users end up using third-party email recovery solutions. If you do choose this path, be extremely careful. Downloading unconfirmed programs from the Internet can harm your computer.
Make sure you only download from trusted sources.
–