When I attempt to empty the Deleted Items folder in Microsoft Outlook 2007 a confirmation message appears saying “Are you sure you want to permanently delete the selected item”. When I click “Yes” another message appears saying “Unknown error has stopped deletion” and none of the messages are deleted. How can I delete messages from Outlook? The computer is running Windows Vista.

When researching your question I could not find any references to the message “Unknown error has stopped deletion” and the closest I found was “An unknown error has occurred”. As such, I will assume that the message you are actually receiving is the unknown error message. Before venturing into any complicated troubleshooting procedures we will start with some basic procedures which fix the most common problems in Outlook. We will first run the Office Diagnostics tool. This will scan Microsoft Office (including Outlook) for any problems and attempt to fix these issues. In Outlook, go to the “Help” menu > “Office Diagnostics”. In the window that appears click the “Continue” button and follow through the screens. Be aware that this process may take around 15 minutes to complete so you may wish to grab a cup of coffee while waiting!

After the Office Diagnostics has completed close Outlook and restart the computer then check whether the problem continues. If the problem does continue, we need to look elsewhere for a resolution. The next likely cause is something that has gone wrong with your Outlook PST file. The PST file is used to store all your email and other data within Outlook. Something going wrong with this file is not a good thing, as it usually has undesirable side-effects such as an inability to access particular Outlook folders or features (e.g. Calendaring). Obviously in your case this may have resulted in you being unable to delete items from the Deleted Items folder. The first operation you should attempt is to compact your PST file. In Outlook, go to the “File” menu > “Data File Management”. The Account Settings window should appear and the “Data File” tab should be selected. You may only have one data file listed or you might have multiple files listed. Repeat the following procedure for all the data files listed. Select a data file entry and click the “Settings” button. In the folder properties window that appears, click the “Compact Now” button. Once the folder has been compacted, click the OK button to return back to the Account Settings window. After all the data files have been compacted, restart Outlook to check whether the problem has been solved.

Should the problem continue there may be further corruption in the PST file which could not be fixed by simply compressing the PST files. In this case, we will need to use the SCANPST utility to scan the PST file for errors and correct any such errors. Before going any further, you need to determine the location of the PST files to scan on the computer. Go to the “File” menu > “Data File Management”. In the “Account Settings” window that appears, each of the PST files should be listed. There should also be a “Filename” heading which lists the location of each PST file. Write down these locations on a piece of paper together with the filenames. Click “Close” to close the Account Settings window and then close Outlook 2007 (this is very important, as the SCANPST utility cannot scan and correct PST files which are currently being used by Outlook).

Now that you have the names and locations of the PST files you can run the SCANPST utility over these files to correct any errors. We will first need to enable the display of hidden files and folders so that you can see the PST files which are likely to be in a hidden folder. In any Windows Explorer window, go to the “Tools” menu > “Folder Options” (if you can’t see the menu bar, press the ALT key to display the menu). From the Folder Options window, click the “View” tab and enable “Show hidden files and folders”. Click OK. Once this has been done you need to start the SCANPST utility. Navigate to the following directory on your computer: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE12. Within this directory you should see a utility named “SCANPST.EXE”. Double-click on this utility to open. Once the utility has started you need to specify the file to scan. Click the “Browse” button and locate the first PST file to scan (as you wrote down on the piece of paper) then click the “Start” button to commence the scan operation. If any errors are detected the SCANPST utility will prompt you to commence the repair process to fix the errors. Repeat the procedure of using SCANPST for all the PST files listed within Outlook.

Once the operation has completed start Outlook 2007 to check whether the problem persists. You can find additional references to using the SCANPST utility at the following article at Office Online Help: office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA100758311033.aspx . Should the problem still continue after using SCANPST this is a more difficult problem to resolve than anticipated, as we have done our best to fix any potential problems with Outlook itself (through the Office diagnostics utility) and the PST data files (through using the SCANPST utility). In this case please contact me again for further advice.