How to prevent Outlook from only showing today’s emails?

Author: Kelly Last Modified: 2025-06-05

In general, all received emails stay in the Inbox of Microsoft Outlook until you move or delete them. However, recently previous emails disappear from the Inbox except today’s email in my Microsoft Outlook. It drives me insane! Finally I fix this problem with clearing filters. Here I will share my findings about how to prevent Microsoft Outlook from only showing today’s emails easily.

Reason 1: Custom filter to only show today’s emails in Outlook

Reason 2: Configure Auto Archive to clean Outlook older than 1 or 2 days

Reason 1: Custom filter to only show today’s emails in Outlook

The most common cause of previous emails disappearing is custom filter applied. To prevent Microsoft Outlook from only showing today’ emails, you can do as following:

Step 1: Shift to the "Mail" view, and open the Inbox which only shows today’s emails.

Step 2: Click the "View Settings" button on the "View" tab.

Note: if you are using Outlook 2007, please click "View" > "Current View" > "Customize Current View".

Step 3: In the coming Advanced View Settings dialog box, click the "Filter" button.

the screenshot of step about custom filtering to only show today’s emails in Outlook 1

Step 4: Then in the Filter dialog box, go to the "Advanced" tab, click to highlight the filter criteria of "Received today" in the "Find items that match these" box, and then click the "Remove" button. See screenshot below:

the screenshot of step about custom filtering to only show today’s emails in Outlook 2

Note: You can also click the "Clear All" button at the bottom of Filter dialog box. Please notice that the "Clear All" button will remove all filter criteria you have created for the opened folder.

Step 5: Click both "OK" buttons to close two dialog boxes.

When you go back to the Inbox, you will see all hidden previous emails have come out.

Reason 2: Configure Auto Archive to clean Outlook older than 1 or 2 days

The other common reason causing only showing today’s emails is Auto Archive with special settings applied in your mail folder. Here I will take the Inbox for example.

Step 1: Shift to the "Mail" view, right click the Inbox in the Navigation Pane, and select the "Properties" from the right-clicking menu.

the screenshot of step about configuring Auto Archive to clean Outlook older than 1 or 2 days 1

Step 2: In the Inbox Properties dialog box, go to the "AutoArchive" tab, and there are two situations:

A. If the "Archive this folder using these settings" is checked, modify the number in the box behind the "Clean out items older than", and then click the following box and specify the "Months" from the drop down list. See screenshot below:

the screenshot of step about configuring Auto Archive to clean Outlook older than 1 or 2 days 2

B. If the "Archive Items in this folder using the default settings" is checked

(1) Click the "Default Archive Settings" button firstly.

(2) Then in the AutoArchive dialog box, modify the number behind "Clean out items older than", click the following box and specify the "Month" from the drop down list,

(3) At last close the AutoArchive dialog box with clicking the "OK" button. See the following two screenshots:

the screenshot of step about configuring Auto Archive to clean Outlook older than 1 or 2 days 3

the screenshot of step about configuring Auto Archive to clean Outlook older than 1 or 2 days 4

Note: Actually, to prevent Outlook from only showing today’s emails, you can also disable the Auto Archive feature with checking the option of "Do not archive items in this folder" in the Inbox Properties dialog box.

Step 3: Click the "OK" button to close the Inbox Properties dialog box.