How to delete all messages or calendar entries older than x months in Outlook?

Author: Kelly Last Modified: 2024-08-22

Sometimes, old email messages or calendar entries congest in Mail/Calendar folders, making your Microsoft Outlook working heavily and slowly. In this article, I will show you some tricks about how to delete all messages or calendar entries older than specified period in Microsoft Outlook.

Delete all messages or calendar entries older than x months with AutoArchive
Delete all messages older than x months with Search Folder

Delete all messages or calendar entries older than x months with AutoArchive

AutoArchive feature can help users to automatically move or permanently delete all messages or calendar entries older than specified days/weeks/months easily in Microsoft Outlook. And you can do as following:

1. Select the folder that you will remove items older than specified days/weeks/months, right click and select the Properties from the drop down list.

the screenshot of step about deleting all messages or calendar entries older than x months with AutoArchive 1

2. In the coming Properties dialog box, go to the AutoArchive tab, and there are two situations:

A: If the option of Archive this folder using these settings is checked
This means you archive this folder with custom settings. Find out the Clean out items older than, then specify the older than period, such as 6 months, next check the option of Permanently delete old items.

the screenshot of step about deleting all messages or calendar entries older than x months with AutoArchive 2

B: If the option of Archive items in this folder using the default settings is checked
Click the Default Archive Settings button; then in the AutoArchive dialog box, specify the older than period behind the Clean out items older than, and check the option of Permanently delete old items.

the screenshot of step about deleting all messages or calendar entries older than x months with AutoArchive 3

3. Click the OK button(s) to close dialog box(es).

After configuring, it will automatically delete messages or calendar entries older than the specified period in Outlook.

AI Mail Assistant in Outlook: Smarter Replies, Clearer Communication (one-click magic!) FREE

Streamline your daily Outlook tasks with the AI Mail Assistant from Kutools for Outlook. This powerful tool learns from your past emails to offer intelligent and accurate responses, optimize your email content, and help you draft and refine messages effortlessly.

This feature supports:

Smart Replies: Get responses crafted from your past conversations—tailored, precise, and ready to go.
Enhanced Content: Automatically refine your email text for clarity and impact.
Effortless Composition: Just provide keywords, and let AI handle the rest, with multiple writing styles.
Intelligent Extensions: Expand your thoughts with context-aware suggestions.
Summarization: Get concise overviews of long emails instantly.
Global Reach: Translate your emails into any language with ease.

This feature supports:

Smart email replies
Optimized content
Keyword-based drafts
Intelligent content extension
Email summarization
Multi-language translation

Best of all, this feature is completely free forever! Don’t wait—download AI Mail Assistant now and enjoy!

Delete all messages older than x months with Search Folder

To delete all messages older than the specified days/weeks/months in Outlook, you can also apply the New Search Folder feature to find out all old messages, and then delete them easily.

1. Select the mail folder where you will remove messages older than specified period.

2. Click the New Search Folder button on the Folder tab. (Note: In Outlook 2007, you can click the File > New > Search Folder.)

the screenshot of step about deleting all messages older than x months with Search Folder 1

3. In the New Search Folder dialog box, click to select the Old mail in the Organizing Mail section, and then click the Choose button.

the screenshot of step about deleting all messages older than x months with Search Folder 2

4. In the coming Old Mail dialog box, specify the older than period in the two boxes, and then click the two OK buttons to close two dialog boxes.

the screenshot of step about deleting all messages older than x months with Search Folder 3

5. Find out and select the new search folder in the Navigation Pane, select all messages in this search folder with pressing the Ctrl + A keys at the same time, and then delete all of them with pressing the Delete key.