Outlook Cannot delete folders because it contains private items the folders are empty

Question

A user of mine had some email folders that when we attempted to move them outlook said "Cannot move because of private items" we recreated the folder structure and then tried to delete the empty folders however the empty folders say "Cannot delete this folder. Right-click the folder, and then click Properties to check your permission for the folder. See the folder owner or your administrator to change your permissions. Cannot copy this folder because it may contain private items."

Solution

You need to ask your Exchange administrator to set permissions on that specific folder: Set-MailboxFolderPermission -Identity [email protected]:\Marketing -User [email protected] -AccessRights Owner For more information about this command, see: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/exchange/mailboxes/set-mailboxfolderpermission?view=exchange-ps

After that, you will be able to delete the folders. You could also ask your Exchange administrator to delete the folders for you.

You can try to give yourself permissions on those folders, by right clicking the folder and click properties (as the error suggests, but that's probably not going to work, it's possible that someone changed permissions on your folders).

Comments

[Erjen Rijnders]

Are you using Exchange or Exchange Online?

[macatwork]

Exchange via Office 365 admin, it doesn't say anything about online

[Erjen Rijnders]

Than it's Exchange Online. You need to ask your administrator to set permissions on that folder. See my answer below.

[DarkDiamond]

This will only work if you in theory have the permissions to do so. As the original question stated that these permissions are not present.