Deleted message in Outlook are still there, H2 delete permanently from the computer! Part 2

This problem has been around for many years and it has, to my knowledge, never been solved. Update after update the problem remains (I am running 14.4.1).

In my case, it comes and goes, but I have never been able to figure out why. For example, today, emails that I deleted several times still appear in the smart folder "Unread".

If anyone has a workaround he'll make a lot of people happy.

I noticed that Spotlight was indexing when the problem reappeared and I wonder if this may be the reason why Outlook is losing track of files. I believe Outlook relies on Spotlight to find files and maybe during indexing it refers to an old state which would explain the reappearing deleted emails. What do you think ?

Here's what I just did :

• Removed all external drives from Spotlight indexing (it was taking forever to index)
• Waited for Spotlight to finish indexing the local drive
• Rebuilt Outlook DB
• Opened Outlook, cleaned emails (re-deleted, marked as read)
• Quit Outlook
• Re-opened Outlook

As a result deleted files were really gone, emails marked as read remained marked as read.

I am still having read messages showing in the "unread" smart folder but I believe it's a different issue.

I hope this can help.

I'm afraid I jumped the gun.

After a while, back to the previous situation. Deleted emails reappearing. So I went for something else that ended up tedious but hopefully will solve the problem on a longer term basis.

I exported my current identity to a new one. I thought it was going to be easy but you have to know that in this process your rules and accounts are not exported! So I recreated my accounts (a dozen) and my rules (more like 2 dozens).

So far so good. I'll keep you posted.