Outlook Windows Delete Empty Inbox Folders

Posted: November 18, 2023 | | Categories: Delphi, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Outlook

My primary working system runs Microsoft Windows and I use Microsoft Outlook as my email and calendar manager for my personal email account. I've moved my Outlook PST file from system to system over the last, oh I don't know, how many years (at least 20 years or so) and the file's HUGE (about 1.5GB right now). To keep the file size manageable (if you call 1.5GB manageable), I use Outlook's Automatic Archive feature to move older Inbox items to an archive file (which right now is about 5GB).

I recently noticed that had a bunch of empty folders left around in my inbox because the archive process emptied them. I wanted to clean them all up, no need to keep empty folders around, but didn't want to delete them manually - mainly because my Inbox has hundreds of folders and right before I wrote this post it had 102 empty ones.

Since I love automating tasks with software, and it's been a while since I've written anything in Delphi (Object Pascal), I decided to create a little utility I can run periodically to delete my Inbox's empty folders. I just completed the app and published it, it's called Outlook Delete Empty Inbox Folders and here's the latest executable.

To use the app, you simply launch it and it accesses the default Outlook profile's Inbox. When you click the Analyze button, it scans the Inbox looking for empty folders. When it finds an empty folder, it adds it to the empty folder list on the app's main screen.

When you're all set and you confirmed that the list looks correct, click the Delete button and the app deletes all of the empty folders in the Inbox.

Enjoy!

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