Hi, Hotmail recently converted me to their new “Outlook” mail. Tried to delete an old folder yesterday. Big problem, there is no longer a “gear” icon in the folder section to manage your folders. Hence, you can no longer delete and obsolete folder. Crazy, but true! Thanks’ for any help!
A lot of people have been surprised and rather confused by the changes in Hotmail as the Windows Live team updated the interface to make it more Outlook-like and more, well, modern. Problem is, they forgot that dictum of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” and now it seems like things that were easy have become tricky or impossible.
Fortunately, deleting an unused folder isn’t one of them, though as you have figured out, there is no more gear button to help figure out how to accomplish what you seek. Instead, the interface has become more app-like and as with Google’s Gmail and other Web-based applications, you need to learn the benefit of experimenting with right click or similar.
And that’s exactly how to delete those pesky folders.
Let me show you!
First off, within Internet Explorer in Windows 8, here’s the top left of my “Outlook” style Hotmail inbox:
Move your cursor over the folder name, however, and right click (or control+click if you’re on a Mac) on the folder name and a menu of options pops up:
Ready? Click “Delete” and that’s it. No confirmation, just a folder list that no longer includes that particular folder:
I have tried everything but nothing hs worked, I cannot delete folders, am on Mac, its a shame that outlook make things so NOT user friendly
I’ve deleted an unwanted folder about 900 times, but every time I sign into my hotmail, it’s still there.
Unfortunately sounds like you’ve uncovered a bug in Hotmail. Hmm… can you rename the folder and will the rename stick?
If anyone’s still struggling, I thought I couldn’t delete the folders but it just turned out that I couldn’t delete them from the favourites menu. Scroll down and you should be able to find the folder and delete it from there.
this does not work (Mac) – no, hovering yields nothing / shame on Outlook!
same for me…. there is no little menu window with “delete” in it, whatever click i click
On my mac I went directly to the Mail instead of going through SAFARI and control /right click worked but the folder must be empty first.
For the MAC, I use Safari,do this..place icon in folder to be deleted, Control & right click together and the box will appear allowing you to delete..awesome !!! Thank you Dave Taylor.
Thank you. I tried what you suggest but it doesn’t work! The only options are create a sub folder, mark as read or empty folder! Do you have any suggestions?
Thank you!! On an old mac and was like this aint working! God bless
Hi Dave, please help asap….
My emails are using up all my storage on my Samsung Galaxy 5 active. …
PLEASE tell me there is a way to empty my folders from my phone. ..
GOD, I HOPE SO! !!!
Sincerely and thank you. …
Anyone know how to delete folders when using an iPad?
I appear to have 2 x junk boxes on hotmail, one which I access daily and another which has appeared in my folders. The second unwanted box shows I have 70 items in it, but I am unable to clear it using the methods you have prescribed. I have been into my Outlook account and the 2nd junk box does not appear. How can I remove this unwanted item from hotmail?
I have the same problem and there is absolutely NOTHING that you can do! It CANNOT be deleted and will reappear if you do! I have deleted mine dozens of times!
Hello,
We are a new business using Outlook and we need to add a signature to our emails. I have copied images from our website, but the formatting is ‘weird’ when I look at it on a phone and the logo does not appear when I send it to a yahoo email address. I must be doing something wrong… Do you have a tutorial for Outlook, (Mac users) on the best way to add a signature?
Thank you,
Vanessa
HELLO DAVE,
(VERY HAPPILY ) THANK YOU SOOOOO MUCH! For your help advice on folders! Im so tickled to get those things cleared up. DROVE ME NUTS WHEN CAN’T GET THINGS TO WORK LIKE IT SHOULD.
And i agree, was a nice change to keep hotmail up-to-date, but if it’s not broke. keep it! at least easier is nice.
Bob
Any way of deleting folders from a tablet? Thanks for any help.
brill, thanks!! nice work 🙂
Perfect, thank you so much. I just deleted 10 folders. I had no idea how to due it!!!
doesn’t work for me. When I right click on the folder, it opens the folder just as if I left cliked on it…
This didn’t work for me either… like you, it only opens the folder 🙁 I tried it several times and patiently hovering over and right clicking …nada
Did you eventually figure it out?
Doesn’t work on my Mac, either. Help!
Odd, I just tried it again to confirm that it worked and while the color scheme and design are slightly different, the right-click still works and the pop-up menu still has the same set of choices. Not sure what you’re using, but did you try Safari on your Mac?
Dave
it doesn’t work for me. Im using El Capitan…on a macbook pro
Thank you!!! I was beginning to think it was impossible!
How can i do that using an MAC computer or is that option only good on a PC?
For the MAC use Control, click and the box will appear allowing you to delete
hmm, I am on a mac, I just followed your directions and it worked like a charm.
Thanks so much, could not get rid of them on my mac, this has cleaned up my hotmail!!!
That worked for me… thanks
At last! Many thx. Control made it work.
ti delete folders you have to click in sam time Ctrl AND Cmd and click with mouse and will give you option hope this help as i was going mental to delete my folders hope this helps
ivan
Thank you so much for showing me how to delete a folder from my outlook hotmail account/platform… your step by step guide had me accomplishing it in minutes, a job that has been driving me crazy for a few weeks. lol.. thank you kind sir for your help
PLEASE How do you delete the ‘Delete’ and ‘Junk’ boxes??
Mine are just stacking up and nothing I do seems to clear them. I’ve even gone into Windows 7 Hotmail cleared them there but they resolutely stay in windows 8. Grrr! Help appreciated!!!
Thank you sooooo much!
Thank you so much for educating on how to delete the not wanted folders!
I was trying for the past so many months- finally decided to check on the net.
Grateful!
All best
Bushu
THANK YOU for the tip on control clicking to delete folders. I’ve been trying to figure this out through Outlook’s help which was not helpful (for me at least) and this was perfect. Now, any tips on how to export emails out of Outlook onto a flash drive? That’s my next quandary and it’s driving me mad trying to figure it out.
Glad that helped. To export from Outlook, search for “outlook export tool” on Bing or Google. Pretty sure you’ll need a third party tool for that task…
Hey, many thanks for nailing this one. (Firefox 24/Mac OS X Snow Leopard): crtl-click and BINGO!
Contextual menu appears, just as you advised.
Folder deleted.
I am using Outlook and Windows 8 and when I right clicked on the unwanted folder there was not any menu that came up like the above example did.
In Firefox 20…Alt+right-click opens the menu
Ok! But How to do this with a Mac?
I tried ” command” ” delete” but does not work.
Exactly what I needed. Thanks for the help!
I use Firefox. When I right-click on a folder the new ‘folder menu’ does pop up, but a browser menu (with options like ‘open link in new window, open link in new tab, etc.) pops up ON TOP OF the folder menu. So, you can’t click on any of the options in the folder menu as they are hidden behind the browser menu.
I guess I’ll go log into my son’s computer with IE so I can delete a folder. (hotmail/outlook changes remind me of facebook changes. convoluted.
Didn’t exactly work that way for me. Probably ’cause I don’t use IE OR Windoze, for that matter.
PLEASE remember that not all of us are Microsoft Slaves and kindly provide additional (that is complete solutions) directions for users of Chrome, Firefox, etc.
Firefox – Ubuntu (Linux) — Very strange. Left-clicked on the Folder to kill.
(Don’t recall seeing such a thing before…. That would open a link… in about any case I can think of.)
WHEN it ain’t broke don’t fix it…. But… recall…. ANYTHING by MicroSquish is, by definition, Broken at ALL TIMES…. 🙂
(Maybe N. Korea will nuke Redmond WA?)
Thanks,
Mark
THANKS A LOT. IT HELPED ME.
Now that Hotmail has been converted to Outlook, when I compose a new email, I no longer can see my folders list on the left. Not happy with new Outlook. I liked Hotmail just fine.
I like u r suggestions Sir Dave Taylor, If my computer had any problem please solve them. I request u to give suggestions in the internet online. Thank U Sir.