Recover Messages from the Deleted Items

In Microsoft Outlook 2003, there are two types of delete actions: hard delete and soft delete.

A soft delete is when an item is moved to the Deleted Items folder in the Microsoft Outlook mailbox; the deleted item can be recovered any time before the Deleted Items folder is emptied.

A hard delete is executed by pressing Shift + Delete in Microsoft Outlook 2003 to any message in the Inbox .Hard deletes also take place if the remote server uses IMAP and doesn't have a Deleted Items folder.

After a hard delete, you may still be able to recover mail items from an Exchange mailbox -- it depends on what the Exchange server's delete retention time is set for.

This functionality is typically only enabled for the Deleted Items folder.

If you want to set delete-recovery for those folders, you need to edit the client registry accessing the Exchange server through Outlook:

1.Open the registry.

2.Navigate to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWARE\Microsoft\Exchange\Client\Options.

3.Add a DWORD value named DumpsterAlwaysOn and set it to 1.

4.Restart Microsoft Outlook to make the change take effect.