If you’ve spent time assembling a distribution list in Outlook, then accidentally deleting it with an unplanned keystroke can seem like a major catastrophe. However, fixing the problem is easier than you might think.
The Microsoft Crabby Office Lady blog points out that provided you go immediately to the Deleted Items folder within your Inbox after losing a distribution list, you can drag the just-deleted list back onto the Contacts folder to retrieve it.
In fact, this logic works with any item in Outlook; while the Deleted Items folder is normally dominated by email and accessed through the Mail view, it will also contain anything else deleted within Outlook itself. To control how often the folder is emptied, head to the Other tab on the Tools –> Options dialog, where you can set your system to automatically empty deleted items whenever you exit Outlook.
Recover a mistakenly deleted distribution list [Crabby Office Lady]
Myrna
Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 4:40 PMSorry, but I’ve tried this before and it doesn’t work. Sure, you can drag it back into your contacts, but when you go to use it to send an email a message comes up that says “An unexpected error has occurred”. I’ll stand corrected if there’s something I’m missing though.
John Kirkham
Friday, March 12, 2010 at 12:10 PMMyrna, that error means you have to create a new profile, then you’ll be able to drag & drop the deleted item no prob’s.
Ruth
Wednesday, May 12, 2010 at 6:18 AMTHANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE HELP! It worked great and saved me from becomming the Crabby Lady!
Gail
Wednesday, June 9, 2010 at 6:39 AMThanks everyone – you just about saved my life over a critical distribution list. Seems to me, though, that the accidental deletion was far to easy to do – I wasn’t even asked if I was sure.
Denise Ward
Thursday, September 1, 2011 at 6:04 AMGail, I hear ya! Surely Microsoft can fix up these pesky bugs that has their customers shedding blood over these pesky things that could surely be fixed rather easily.
Denise Ward
Thursday, September 1, 2011 at 6:01 AMI tried this suggestion but it wasn’t in the deleted items folder after I deleted the distribution list. I also looked in the recycled items folder and nothing there either. Desperately trying to think of something to do I tried doing a search in the deleted items folder; so I entered the name of the lost distribution list in the search box and voila! I could hardly believe it but it popped up right away!
Ruth
Saturday, October 8, 2011 at 3:22 AMThank you!!! This worked I am breathing much easier!
Ellie
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 1:31 PMI found my deleted distribution list but I can’t figure out how to get in back as a distribution list. I printed it out but I don’t want to do this all over again. Any ideas?