Items that you delete are moved to the Deleted Items or Trash folders but aren’t permanently deleted until those folders are emptied. Over time, the contents of the Deleted Items folder can consume a large amount of space on your computer or email server storage quota.
When you delete messages in Outlook, the messages are moved to the Trash folder. Items in this folder continue to take up space on your computer's hard disk and — if your account is set up to leave copies of the messages on the mail server — in your account mailbox. To free up some disk and mailbox space, you can empty the Trash folder.
If you have multiple e-mail accounts, you will have a Trash folder for each account.
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Hold down CONTROL, and then in the folder list, select the Trash folder.
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Select Empty Folder.
Notes:
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Some kinds of e-mail accounts, such as Windows Live Hotmail accounts, automatically empty the Trash folder at predefined times.
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With some email accounts you can set up a schedule in Outlook to empty your Trash folder regularly.
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IMAP accounts offer multiple options for how deleted items are stored and displayed. To set your preferences, on the Tools menu, click Accounts, and then select the IMAP account in the account list. Click Advanced, click the Folders tab, and then next to Trash, select the options that you want.
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See also
Empty the Deleted Items folder in Outlook for Windows
