‘Recover Deleted Items’ functionality of Outlook

I hope now you are able to distinguish the two terms 'hard deletion' & ‘soft deletion' of mails items in Outlook context. The mails that are hard deleted can be recovered from the hidden dumpster only if they are within retention period. You can do this by using the ‘Recover Deleted Items’ functionality of Outlook. To enable the Recover Deleted Items functionality on mail folders other than the ‘Deleted Items’ folder you need to make registry changes to set “DumpsterAlwaysOn” value to 1.

Setting “DumpsterAlwaysOn” to 1 in Outlook 2003 let you access to the Dumpster for folders (Calendar, Contacts and Notes folders.) other than mail folders. Additionally it let you access dumpster on Outlook anywhere via RPC over HTTP. In case of Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010, you don’t need to set this value to access non mail folders as this feature is already implemented there for all folders in user mailbox. But if you want to apply this functionality for shared mailboxes then, you will have to set the registry value.

How to set “DumpsterAlwaysOn” registry key value?
1. First close Outlook application. 

2.Now start the ‘Windows registry editor’ :

• Go to “Start”
• Then, open “Run” dialog by Pressing “Windows Key+R”.

3.To open the Registry Editor Type 'regedit'  and then click OK 

4.Locate “DumpsterAlwaysOn” registry key (location is different for different versions)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Exchange\Client\Option

5.Click registry key & Go to Edit menu>New>DWORD Value.

6.Then right click it to rename the value DumpsterAlwaysOn. 

Note: Type the name DumpsterAlwaysOn without any spaces in the name.

7.Double-click this new value (DumpsterAlwaysOn Data type: DWORD) and type its value as '1'(without quotes) in the Value data area

After setting the registry value to 1, click ‘Decimal’ from Base area .

8.Finally click OK to save the changes. 

9.Close Regedit(i.e. Registry Editor)

10. Restart Outlook application

Now the Recover Deleted Items functionality is available for all mailbox folders (mail folders as well as non mail folders such as Contacts, Calendar items etc.)

The ‘Recover Deleted Items’ functionality can be used if you are working in Exchange environment. If you are working on Outlook using POP3, IMAP or Hotmail account, then this feature is unavailable. In that case you can restore the deleted mail items from the backup file or PST file (saved on your local system) with the help of deleted mail recovery software.