Permanently delete mail items

[Rob.]

We have Outlook 97 on the PC at work and when the boss checks the emails
he tends to find a number of spam messages for viagra etc. He deletes
these and is then appalled to find that "another" batch of these
messages has now arrived in the deleted items folder and he has to go
through these deleting them again. Is it possible to set something so
that deleting them from the inbox gets rid of them permanently rather
than moving them to the deleted items folder so we do not have to listen
to his cries of "There's another load of the **@@*@@* things arrived!"
several times a day.

We have tried to explain what the deleted items folder is, and even how
to "empty deleted items folder" in one operation but he is not that much
of a PC expert. If we could make delete a one click operation that
would be simplest. He deletes important messages and files from the PC
anyway so removing this safeguard would not really make much difference.

TIA

 

[VanguardLH]

We have Outlook 97 on the PC at work

This is for e-mail at *work* but they are still back on the antiquated
and unsupported 97 version of Outlook?

and when the boss checks the emails

"the" PC has now become the boss' PC.

he tends to find a number of spam messages for viagra etc.

Why isn't spam filtering getting performed up on the company's mail
server?

He deletes these and is then appalled to find that "another" batch of
these messages has now arrived in the deleted items folder and he has
to go through these deleting them again.

Where did your boss expect the mail items to go when he deleted them?
"Delete" merely moves the item from its current folder into the Deleted
Items folder. That has how Outlook has worked since it existed. If
your boss wants to permanently delete (aka hard delete) the unwanted
items, use Shift+Del when deleting the item or delete the item from the
Deleted Items folder.

Is it possible to set something so that deleting them from the inbox
gets rid of them permanently rather than moving them to the deleted
items folder so we do not have to listen to his cries of "There's
another load of the **@@*@@* things arrived!" several times a day.

And later you'll hear him whining when he permanently deletes items
that he decides he wants back or he picked the wrong one when he did a
permanent delete. The soft-delete provides recovery by moving items
into the Deleted Items folder. The hard-delete is protected by using
slightly different means of deleting items plus a prompt (which your
boss can disable in Outlook's options) to make sure you really want to
hard delete an item.

We have tried to explain what the deleted items folder is, and even
how to "empty deleted items folder" in one operation but he is not
that much of a PC expert.

Tell your boss that you didn't write the program. He gets what the
program provides.

If we could make delete a one click operation that would be simplest.
He deletes important messages and files from the PC anyway so
removing this safeguard would not really make much difference.

Tell your boss to add the Shift key when he hits the Del key. Then
tell your boss to OK a purchase of OutlookSpy to recover those
permanently deleted items that he will later want back.

Hopefully you employ an enterprise backup scheme where the boss has a
backup client that runs periodically to backup his host using a network
backup program that saves his files to a networked host.