LarsBlog

I've recently discovered the joys of running Google Desktop on my machine, primarily as a really fast way to search all my emails in Outlook.  But there's one issue I've had that nobody seems to have an answer for - Google Desktop will not index the 'Deleted Items' folder in Outlook.  You can configure it to hold items in the search index even after they've been deleted, but that's not the same.  If you receive an email and delete it or move it to 'Deleted Items' before Google Desktop has a chance to index it, it will never appear in your search results.

So I took it upon myself to devise a solution to this.  This soution was developed under Windows XP with Outlook 2000 (Yes, some big corporates still run this!).  It basically involves creating a new folder called 'Archived Deleted Items' and ensure that any mail you delete will go here rather than the default 'Deleted Items' folder.  Google Desktop will see this just as any normal Outlook folder and will index it.

1. Create a folder called "Deleted Items Archived" as a subfolder of "Inbox".
   
2. Create a text file called archiveDeletedMail.bat with the following contents:
   

   cscript archiveDeletedMail.vbs

3. Create a text file called archiveDeletedMail.vbs with the below contents.  This VB Script will basically attach to your existing authenticated Outlook session and, every few minutes, move all mail from "Deleted Items" to "Deleted Items Archived":

   Set out = WScript.StdOut
   
   while true
   
   Set mapiSession = WScript.CreateObject("MAPI.Session")
   
   'Piggyback on current MAPI Session (requires Outlook to be running)
   mapiSession.Logon "", "", False, False, 0, False ', ServerName & vbLf & UserName
   
   '4 = DeletedItems, 1 = Inbox
   Set folderInbox = mapiSession.GetDefaultFolder(1)
   Set folderDeletedItems = mapiSession.GetDefaultFolder(4)
   
   'Get "Deleted Items Archived" folder
   If Not folderInbox.Folders Is Nothing Then 'there are child folders
       Set inboxSubfolders = folderInbox.Folders
       Set objOneSubfolder = inboxSubfolders.GetFirst
       While Not objOneSubfolder Is Nothing ' loop through all children
           If objOneSubfolder.Name = "Deleted Items Archived" then
               Set folderDeletedItemsArchived = objOneSubfolder
               Set objOneSubfolder = Nothing
           Else
               Set objOneSubfolder = inboxSubfolders.GetNext
           End If
       Wend
   End If
   
   'Now we have Deleted Items and Deleted Items Archive.
   'So we move messages from one to the other.
   If Not folderDeletedItems.Messages Is Nothing Then 'there are messages
       Set deletedMessages = folderDeletedItems.Messages
       Set objOneDeletedMessage = deletedMessages.GetFirst
       While Not objOneDeletedMessage Is Nothing ' loop through all children
           out.write(now() & " - Moving Message: """ & objOneDeletedMessage.Subject & _
               """ to Folder: " & folderDeletedItemsArchived.Name & vbCRLF)
           objOneDeletedMessage.MoveTo(folderDeletedItemsArchived.ID)
           Set objOneDeletedMessage = deletedMessages.GetNext
       Wend
   End If
   
   
   
   'Clean up
   set folderInbox = Nothing
   set folderDeletedItems = Nothing
   set inboxSubfolders = Nothing
   set objOneSubfolder = Nothing
   set folderDeletedItemsArchived = Nothing
   set objOneDeletedMessage = Nothing
   set deletedMessages = Nothing
   set inboxSubfolders = Nothing
   
   mapiSession.Logoff
   Set mapiSession = Nothing
   
   
   'Wait for next execution
   WScript.Sleep(600000)
   
   wend

4. Whenever you run Outlook, run archiveDeletedMail.bat afterwards.

Unfortunately, the console window from this script will always stay open, but to me this is much less of an inconvenience than not having my Deleted Items folder indexed!

Update: Oh, if you really don't want to see the console window from this script always staying open (and you work in a corporate that doesn't disable Windows Task Scheduler in it's SOE!) you could probably remove the"while" and "wend" lines from the above script and configure it as a scheduled task to run (minimised) every X minutes.