Deleted message in Outlook are still there, H2 delete permanently from the computer!

Outlook is doing the same thing Entourage did before it. Mail you remove from the Deleted Items folder doesn't really go away. You just can't see it in the interface.

Quit Outlook. Hold down the Option key and launch it again. Rather than Outlook's normal interface, you'll get the Microsoft Database Utility. Select your identity (most people normally have only the one) in the list and click Rebuild. When it's done, you'll have a new Main Identity and the one it worked from, which now has an appended name of [Backed up 2012....].

Quit the utility and go to the Documents folder of your user account. Then /Microsoft User Data/Office 2011 Identities/ . Put the mail identity with [Backed up...] in its name in the trash. Before deleting it, launch Outlook again to make sure the rebuilt data is opened correctly. If so, empty the trash. Your deleted emails will now actually be removed from the hard drive.

If for some reason the rebuilt identity doesn't open (I've never had it happen), you can drag the new Main Identity folder to the trash and put the original back. Then remove the "backed up" part of the name so it just says Main Identity again. When Outlook is launched, it will use that one as if nothing had ever changed. All of the deleted emails you were trying to remove will be back with it, but you can at least try rebuilding it again instead of being stuck with a non working identity.

Then that could be a pretty serious security flaw. Deleted items, after a rebuild of the database, should definitely not exist on the drive.

Just to be sure, where did you find it? Was the old database (with the date tacked on) still on the drive when you searched? If so, that should be where you found it, not in the rebuilt database.

I was unable to replicate your issue. I created, sent and retrieved a unique email. They appeared, as expected, in the Messages. I then deleted the sent and returned message. With Outlook still running, they remained in the same folder, even though their placement in the interface had changed.

I then closed Outlook and watched as the two emails disappeared from the Messages folder (I have Outlook set to delete emails from the Deleted Items folder on exit). They were nowhere to be found on the drive after that. I hadn't even rebuilt the database yet.

The only place I could find any sort of reference to them was in the Database file of that identity. And then only if I opened it in Word with the option to Recover Text From Any File. From that, all I got was the subject line I had given the email. All body text was gone.

Thanks, worked great!