How do I delete all the old messages from the Inbox in Outlook 200

[jlandell]

I have over 2000 messages left in my Inbox from a bulk email I did. Now I
can't get rid of it all. There must be a straight answer to such a dumb
question, but I simply can't find one. I hope it's easy. I'm not able to
find a .pst file on my C: drive if that's actually the problem. I'm stuck
with this.

 

[F.H. Muffman]

I have over 2000 messages left in my Inbox from a bulk email I did.

Now I can't get rid of it all. There must be a straight answer to
such a dumb question, but I simply can't find one. I hope it's easy.
I'm not able to find a .pst file on my C: drive if that's actually the
problem. I'm stuck with this.

So, basically, you want to delete all the messages that you see in your Inbox
in Outlook? Single click on a message, hit control-a so that all the messages
are selected and hit delete?

 

[DL]

Inbox? sent mail should be in the Sent
I suppose you've tried selecting them & pressing delete?

The pst is a hidden file, you have to include hidden in any search, not that
you can do anything constructive with the pst, other than running
scanpst.exe, the repair tool on it.

 

[jlandell]

Well, that hasn't worked perhaps because there are so many messages. The
error comes back : "To avoid this error, delete fewer than 4,000 messages in
a single operation.
It is also possible that you do not have the appropriate permissions to
delete messages. If you need to delete content from a folder owned by someone
else, contact the owner of the folder to obtain the necessary permissions, or
have the owner delete the content for you."
That's the message that comes back no matter what I try. I'm the only one
using this program, and the only one who uses this computer. Well, I found
the outlook.pst file and it's huge -- 1,674,497 KB. I CAN delete some of the
messages from Outlook one-at-a-time style, but some of them I can't delete.
That approach would take too long! Now, I really don't know where that file
is located, or how to find it again. It came up once with the Search
utility, but not again today. Very trickey software here!

 

[jlandell]

OK, I found the scanpst.exe program, ran it, pointed to the huge file, and it
ran for a long time reporting it found a zillion errors. All done,
restarted, and the same dang thing happens. Error reports quote: Some items
cannot be deleted. They were either moved or already deleted :-[ or access
was denied. Unquote

sure... looking at the <<Help>> I get this
"This error may be the result of trying to delete more than 4,000 messages
at one time. Outlook can delete no more than 4,000 messages when it is
working with a server message store.
"To avoid this error, delete fewer than 4,000 messages in a single operation.
It is also possible that you do not have the appropriate permissions to
delete messages. If you need to delete content from a folder owned by someone
else, contact the owner of the folder to obtain the necessary permissions, or
have the owner delete the content for you."

No, no, I'm not trying to delete them all, it's one-at-a-time that doesn't
even work. I'd like to delete or move everything out of the way.
All-together-now! --WHAT??

PS: DL: I didn't know all these messages were going to the Inbox. I was
using Outlook 2003 with my Act! contact manager, and it all happened behind
the screen. I'm trying to get everything moved to Outlook because the Act!
program just ActsUp a lot. I later learned that 2003 doesn't ever work well
with this program.

 

[DL]

Start scanpst.exe again, run it several times on the pst, if its still
fixing errors run it again until you get a clean pass.

OK, I found the scanpst.exe program, ran it, pointed to the huge file, and
it
ran for a long time reporting it found a zillion errors. All done,
restarted, and the same dang thing happens. Error reports quote: Some
items
cannot be deleted. They were either moved or already deleted :-[ or
access
was denied. Unquote

sure... looking at the <<Help>> I get this
"This error may be the result of trying to delete more than 4,000 messages
at one time. Outlook can delete no more than 4,000 messages when it is
working with a server message store.
"To avoid this error, delete fewer than 4,000 messages in a single
operation.
It is also possible that you do not have the appropriate permissions to
delete messages. If you need to delete content from a folder owned by
someone
else, contact the owner of the folder to obtain the necessary permissions,
or
have the owner delete the content for you."

No, no, I'm not trying to delete them all, it's one-at-a-time that doesn't
even work. I'd like to delete or move everything out of the way.
All-together-now! --WHAT??

PS: DL: I didn't know all these messages were going to the Inbox. I was
using Outlook 2003 with my Act! contact manager, and it all happened
behind
the screen. I'm trying to get everything moved to Outlook because the
Act!
program just ActsUp a lot. I later learned that 2003 doesn't ever work
well
with this program.

Inbox? sent mail should be in the Sent
I suppose you've tried selecting them & pressing delete?

The pst is a hidden file, you have to include hidden in any search, not
that
you can do anything constructive with the pst, other than running
scanpst.exe, the repair tool on it.