Here’s How to Change Email Retention Policy in Outlook 2013

Managing emails in Outlook can become challenging when old messages start disappearing automatically. This happens because of the Outlook email retention policy—a rule that determines how long emails stay before being permanently deleted. By default, Outlook applies a fixed retention period (like 30 days or 2 years), but you can change it to suit your needs. In this guide, we’ll show you how to change the email retention policy in Outlook 2019, 2016, 2013, and 2010. You’ll also learn what happens when retention expires, how to create custom folder rules, and how to recover emails if they are deleted.

The retention policy is the length of time of an item or a folder from the arrival time until it has been moved to the Deleted Items folder. In other words, the email retention settings state a time period for items until expiry, when the email is deleted. Basically, the retention period begins from the creation date (i.e., the sent emails) or the received date (i.e., the received emails).

In most of the organizations, the volume and data complexity are increasing day-by-day in terms of email documents and instant messages. With a retention policy, it becomes easy to retain content so that it cannot be deleted permanently before the retention period ends. Also, it enables the deletion of the content permanently at the end of the retention period. Hence, most of the users want to know how to change the email retention policy in Outlook 2016, 2013, 2010, etc. In this blog, it is mainly focused on the benefits and the tricks to set a retention policy on a folder in Outlook 2013 and other versions.

User Queries—Change Outlook Email Retention Policy

“Recently I have noticed that the retention policy in my Outlook is set to a default of 30 days. It indicated that the emails will be retained only for 30 days of deletion, after which it will be permanently deleted. I am confused and need to change the settings immediately. Is the retention policy settings can be changed? If so, please suggest the correct method to set email retention policy on the folder. Thanks in advance!”

“I have 60 days of the strict retention policy. There is an urgent need to archive past emails. I am able to copy MSG files to a local folder, but I cannot sort them as per the received date. If I try to export the emails to a local PST file, is that the file will be affected by the retention policy? Is there some other way out to change email retention policy in Outlook 2016?”

Benefits of Effectively Managing Mail Retention Policy

• Reduce risk in case of litigation or a security breach by deleting the old data permanently, which is not required
• Helps the organization to share information effectively by ensuring that the users work with the relevant and current content
• Ensures a proactive decision in terms of data retention, whether to retain or delete content or both to retain and delete the content
• Enables applying a single policy to either the entire organization or just a specific locations or users
• Apply a policy to all content or just a content which meets a specific keyword or specific types of sensitive information

Retention Period in Outlook 2013

Retention period specifically covers a range of time. One can set the email retention policy according to the requirement. This change of settings will help to change the email retention policy in Outlook 2016, 2013, 2010, and other lower editions.

• The policies which one can avail include the 1 Week Delete (7 days) and 1 Month Delete (1 month) options.
• In addition, to avail long-term policies, go for 1 Year Delete (1 year) and 5 Year Delete (5 years) options.
• In case of crucial data or data that cannot be deleted, i.e., important messages or folders, choose the Never Delete (Never) option.

How to Change Email Retention Policy in Outlook 2016 & 2019?

The retention period of the email data items is set to a default retention period of two years. Therefore, emails that are two years or older will be permanently deleted. In order to retain the emails, a user can set an individual retention policy for a folder. Hence, move all the emails to the folder and manually set a longer retention period.

Solution 1

• Firstly, open Outlook application to set email retention policy in Outlook 2013
• Then, click the Home menu and select the folder which needs to be changed

• Now, on the Folder menu, click on the Policy option

• Under Folder Policy list, choose the desired retention policy and click OK

Solution 2

A user can recover a data item that has been deleted by following the registry method. This can be done by creating or modifying the registry value, which is mentioned below.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Exchange\Client\Options
Value name: DumpsterAlwaysOn
Data type: DWORD
Value data: 1

Conclusion

Changing the email retention policy in Outlook ensures that important emails don’t get deleted too soon while keeping your mailbox organized. Whether you’re using Outlook 2019, 2016, 2013, or 2010, you can set custom rules to extend or shorten how long emails are kept. Remember, once retention expires, emails are permanently deleted and cannot be restored manually. If a user wants to recover the permanently deleted data or other PST data items after the retention time period. Then, switch to Outlook Recovery—a professional tool. It is an effective tool to recover deleted Outlook emails from PST files. It is also capable of repairing both minor and major corruption in the PST file.By customizing retention policies wisely, you can balance compliance needs, mailbox space, and email accessibility without losing critical data.

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