Cannot delete email messages

[kroser]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel Email Client: Exchange I'm using Entourage 2008 with an Exchange Server. Whenever I try to delete a message, the message itself never gets deleted, and the selected message moves to the one previous to the one I tried to delete.

An Outlook 2003 (Windows XP) client on this same account can delete messages. Similarly a Thunderbird IMAP access to this same account can delete messages.

I've tried everything I can think of to get Entourage to work:

Rebuilt the database
Removed and re-added the exchange account
Removed Office 2008 completely and all preference files, then reinstalled Office 2008 and all the updates.

Is there anything else I can do? Any error logs to look at? Any message captures to make?

Thanks

 

[sflaherty]

I'm having the exact same symptoms.

In addition, I can delete messages from another Mac using Entourage linked to the same account. I saw other threads about not being able to delete but they seemed to be describing different conditions.

 

[kroser]

I finally found my problem. Since I access this account with other email clients, I had removed the "Deleted Items" folder, hoping to consolidate all my deleted email in one folder, such as "Trash". "Deleted Items" was sitting as a subfolder of "Trash" and Outlook was quite happy using it in that location. I didn't realize that by deleting this folder Entourage would SILENTLY refuse to delete email without giving any clue what the problem was.

You can not simply create a new "Deleted Items" folder in Entourage with the "New Folder..." command and expect it to use it as the folder for deleted messages. There must be something special about the original "Deleted Items" folder.

I did find I could recreate this folder by dragging the "Deleted Items" folder that shows up under "On My Computer" up to the account that was missing the folder. A new "Deleted Items" folder will show up and it will have an trash icon next to it.

 

[sflaherty]

Thanks for the follow-up, this worked on my machine as well. I had to drag-copy (hold down option) with the delete items folder to get it work.

 

[matthius]

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I had a client with the same symptoms. The suggested fix did not work for me but it did lead me to a solution that worked for me. In my case the user had accidentally moved the Deleted Items folder into the Contacts folder. This shouldn't and to my knowledge can't happen in Outlook, Entourage (with Exchange connection), or OWA but it can happen with an IMAP client. The IMAP client apparently doesn't view Contact or Deleted Items as "special" folders.

In my situation simply dragging the Deleted Items folder from the local tree to the server tree didn't work because the "special" folder still existed (albeit in the wrong location).

The solution that worked for me was to locate the "special" Deleted Items folder (in my case this was under Contacts) and then use an IMAP connection to move it back to the user's root.