Unable to Empty Junk Mail and Deleted Items Folders in Outlook on the Web

Question

Since mid-November, there is an issue with not being able to empty the Junk Mail folder or the Deleted Items folder in Outlook on the web. There is no Litigation Hold on the mailbox. Attempts have been made to switch between cached and online mode with the desktop app, but the problem persists.

Various solutions from Microsoft, Lifewire, and Reddit have been tried without success.

Does anyone have any ideas on why this issue is occurring?

Answer 1

Hi @Michael Gazdzik

Welcome to our forum!

What is your account type? (Microsoft 365 business email account or personal email account).

The reason could be that the size of the recoverable item has reached its limit. More information, see: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/recoverable-items-folder.

Please check the size of the Recoverable Items folder:

If this is the case, please follow this link to delete items from the recoverable items folder and see if it can help with this issue:

Clean up or delete items from the Recoverable Items folder in Exchange Online

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Answer 2

Turns out there was a retention tag created by a former admin for an alias of mine to prevent deletion of Discovery Holds. The solution was to remove all the retention tags, remove unnecessary emails, and then recreate them and retention policy.

The former admin had created all sorts of policies and never documented anything.