Unable to delete email in Outlook 2K7 on Windows 7

This is happening on my wife's brand new laptop. It's a Dell Vostro 1320, 3GB DDR3 and a 2.6 GHz Core 2 Duo processor. It's running Windows 7 and has Office 2007 Enterprise installed. Outlook was working fine after I installed it and the deleting was working okay (I believe so) initially. Then my wife pointed out that she cannot delete emails by using the delete key on the keyboard, CTRL+D or the X in the toolbar (which should be red but its grayed out). I tried repairing the PST file, to no avail, and tried an OST file repair but there is no .ost file. (It's not set up to cache, but I'm not sure if that's a cause for the problem or not.) Also, worth mentioning, is that I imported 2 .pst files from her old laptop with just emails (Outlook 2007) so that her old emails would be present in her inbox. I had to do things the way I did because her account is set up with IMAP (I think?) and the old emails weren't pushing out from the server.

So what's wrong with the delete function? I should mention that if she opens an email and deletes from the toolbar within the message it works fine.

Sorry for so much information, but I felt it was good to unload the details.

Thanks,
Eric

Edited by Eric RBA, 22 January 2010 - 11:29 AM.

IMAP works differently than POP and IMAP on Outlook can be confusing (search Outlook help for IMAP for a decent explanation). Unless you have a specific need to use IMAP on Outlook, I would avoid it. Your best bet may be to simply create another Outlook profile and setup your wife's email w/ POP. You may have to forgo the automatic configuration and configure it manually. Contact your mail provider for the correct POP settings. Instead of importing the PSTs you can just open them separately. Once the second profile is configured and working to your satisfaction, you can delete the first profile.

Hi Bolsterplate, thanks for the help. Unfortunately I'm not looking for a work-around on this. The email account (server) doesn't support POP3 and I've tried every option as far as configuring goes. The way the email account is set up is the only way it can be done. I need to figure out why the DELETE option doesn't work.

Was having the same problem with my University IMAP account. The fix is to open the inbox and add a new "Deleted Items" folder. The new mail protocol evidently moves the mail to a different folder to avoid the need to purge the inbox each time.

Dr. Cobey, I like that. We need Doctors around here, haha! So are you saying that there is a way to create a legitimate "Deleted Items" folder, or is this just creating a folder along with other organizational folders, and naming it that? If this works then I am okay with that solution.

Thanks!