How to mark messages as expired in Outlook?

Author: Kelly Last Modified: 2014-08-22

After a long time there may be so many email messages in the mailbox that makes your mailbox big and working heavily. Actually, if you have specified expired date for email messages, you can hide or remove those old expired email messages easily. In this article, I will introduce several methods to mark email messages as expired in Microsoft Outlook easily.

Mark received messages as expired in Outlook

Auto mark sent items as expired in Outlook 2010 and 2013

Auto mark sent items as expired in Outlook 2007

Office Tab - Enable Tabbed Editing and Browsing in Microsoft Office, Making Work a Breeze

Read More...Download...

Unlock Kutools for Outlook's free version now and enjoy over 70 features with unlimited access forever

Automate emailing with Auto CC/BCC, Auto Forward by rules; send Auto Reply (Out of Office) without requiring an exchange server...
Get reminders like BCC Warning when replying to all while you're in the BCC list, and Remind When Missing Attachments for forgotten attachments...
Improve email efficiency with Reply (All) With Attachments, Auto Add Greeting or Date & Time into Signature or Subject, Reply Multiple Emails...
Streamline emailing with Recall Emails, Attachment Tools (Compress All, Auto Save All...), Remove Duplicates, and Quick Report...

Boost your Outlook 2021 - 2010 or Outlook 365 with these advanced features. Enjoy 70+ powerful features and elevate your email experience!

Read More...Download Free Version...

Mark received messages as expired in Outlook

If you want to mark received messages as expired in Microsoft Outlook, you can do as following:

Step 1: Double click the email that you want to mark as expired.

Step 2: Click the anchor at the bottom-right corner of Tags group (or Options tab in Outlook 2007) on the Message tab.

Note: You can also click File > Properties to display the Properties dialog box in Outlook 2010 and 2013.

Step 3: In the popping up Properties dialog box (or Message Options dialog box in Outlook 2007), check the option of Expires after, enter certain date and time in the following boxes, and click the Close button. See screen shot below:

Step 4: Save and close this opening email message.

Note: This method is also available to mark sent messages and composing messages as expired, too.

Auto mark sent items as expired in Outlook 2010 and 2013

This section will introduce a tricky to automatically add expired date for all sent email messages in Microsoft Outlook 2010 and 2013.

Step 1: Click the File > Options.

Step 2: In the Outlook Options dialog box,

(1) Click the Mail in the left bar;

(2) Go to the Send messages section, and check the option of Mark messages as expired after this many days, and specify a certain number in the following box. See screen shot:

Step 3: Click the OK button to close the Outlook Options dialog box.

From now on, all sent email messages will be added with an expired date when sending.

For example, you have preset the option of Mark messages as expired after 180 days in the Outlook Options, and now you are creating an email on 2014/8/10, it will set the expired date on 2015/2/6 automatically.

Auto mark sent items as expired in Outlook 2007

It’s quite different to configure Outlook 2007’s options to automatically mark sent email messages as expired. You can following these steps to set:

Step 1: Click the Tools > Options.

Step 2: Click the E-mail Options button on the Preferences tab in the coming Options dialog box.

Step 3: In the popping up E-mail Options dialog box, click the Advanced E-mail Options button.

Step 4: Now you get into the Advanced E-mail Options dialog box, check the option of Message expire after x days, and enter a certain number into the box. See screen shot below: