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I am having a problem where when I use quick reply and hit the Delete, the email I am working on is deleted. What I am expecting is for some of the text to be deleted, as in older Outlook or any other text editor.

I have tried this on other computer running outlook 2013 and there it works as I would expect. If the reply has focus, the email is not deleted, and instead the text is.

I know it is not a keyboard problem (button stuck) because the problem occurs if I RDP into my machine from a machine on which this issue does not exist.

Incidentally I also cannot Ctrl+C from outlook. It works everywhere else, and normal copy from outlook using right click works. I do not know if this could be related.

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  • Does this problem persist after restarting Windows?
    – matthewk
    Feb 24, 2014 at 22:53
  • @matthewk yes it has been going on for a few reboots. it started after upgrading windows to 8.1 from 7 and outlook from 2010 to 2013
    – Andrey
    Feb 24, 2014 at 23:03
  • Have you tried pressing all the Ctrl and Alt keys on the keyboard? I've seen them become sort of "virtually" stuck before.
    – matthewk
    Feb 24, 2014 at 23:54
  • #matthewk yes. Tried using a different keyboard. The RDP experiment must use completely different ways to process the keyboard
    – Andrey
    Feb 25, 2014 at 0:13
  • i'm infected with this problem. if I reply and use the delete key right away nothing happens. but then about 5 mins into the reply something happens and the delete key magically deletes the email i'm replying to.
    – Eric L
    May 29, 2018 at 10:29

9 Answers 9

Reset to default
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Just in case anyone else experienced this...there is a setting in Outlook 2013 that you can uncheck to fix not only the issue of the Delete key deleting emails but also the inability to use CTRL+C to copy text from emails.

Go to File -> Options -> Mail. Under the "Outlook Panes" heading, click the button for Reading Pane. Uncheck the box for "Single key reading using spacebar". Click OK to save that change.

You should now be able to delete text with the Delete key while using in-line replies, and you should also be able to copy/paste. You will no longer be able to use the spacebar to move between messages in your folders.

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  • At this time my outlook is working correctly, but that option is checked. So this appears to be unrelated
    – Andrey
    Nov 12, 2014 at 17:49
  • I can confirm that unchecking the "Single key reading using spacebar" box resolved the problem for me. Perhaps it's not addressing the root of the problem, but it worked lol.
    – Doug
    Nov 14, 2014 at 14:28
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    Still broken for me :(
    – Gerhard Powell
    Aug 12, 2015 at 17:46
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    This does not work for me (Outlook 365). The email is moved into the Drafts folder immediately when I hit Delete.
    – Mark Lakata
    Jan 23, 2018 at 19:35
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    I had to restart outlook after (closing it in the system tray too) for it to work.
    – Kobbe
    Oct 3, 2018 at 14:36
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I only had to close and then re-open Outlook and that fixed the delete key issue. On a side note, I find that with the vast majority of Outlook problems, a new Outlook Profile fixes just about all of them. I hope this helps.

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  • Outlook 2013. Simply restarting Outlook fixed it for me. Doug's answer about changing the setting didn't fix it for me.
    – Chro
    Apr 25, 2017 at 14:46
  • Restarting Outlook 365 fixed the problem for me. Doug's answer did not fix it.
    – Mark Lakata
    Jan 23, 2018 at 19:37
  • Restarting Outlook AFTER doing Doug's fix worked for me.
    – Paul Bailey
    Feb 5, 2020 at 17:10
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Running a full repair on office fixed both problems. I do not think this is a great solution as it is rather time consuming, but it works. Also is odd as the problem started from the point of original instalation

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Sounds Silly but I have noticed this behaviour in the 'Docked' reply windows with some keyboards. The delete action operates on the message instead of the text.

Undock the reply message. The delete key functions as expected. I believe this behaviour is actually different with different keyboards.

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Follow Doug's instructions plus those I provide:

Try rebooting, then open Outlook and reverse the above and reboot again. When you re-open Outlook this last time this behavior is fixed. It seems to be caused by setting changes that are caused by updates being pushed, but that are not persisted to user selectable check boxes, so you don't have any indication the settings apply. This is a workaround fix that returns the functionality to be able to delete text in Outlook without having the original email deleted.

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I have this problem too, and no fix that I could find was working. I thought it might be something to do with my mouse cursor changing it's 'attention'.

I remembered that I use a third-party application called "WizMouse" to improve cursor behaviour in Windows. The problem stopped happening when I disabled this. Check if you have any applications that intefere with mouse behaviour, directly or indirectly.

As it happens, this application is so useful, I'll just be avoiding inline replys from now on, instead of keeping it disabled.

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Try installing Office 2013 SP1 (just released). http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2817430 I have no particular reason to expect that this will fix the problem, but it's worth a try.

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I also had this problem with Outlook (windows 8). The email would disappear from my Inbox but would be retained in my Sent box as part of my reply, even though my intent was to retain the original email in my Inbox. To cure the problem, I: 1. Clicked on Options (the gear logo at the top right corner). 2. Clicked on "Reading Email". 3. Clicked on "Group by conversation and pre-load messages" 4. My default setting was "group by conversation". When I selected "Show messages individually" the original message remained in my Inbox after I reply or forward.

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Had a similar problem and also had an accumulation of unread reminder notices in bottom left of my screen despite having read and dealt with them already. Unticking the spacebar option didn't work. Only after fully closing Outlook and reopening it resolved the issue

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  • this doesn't seem to answer OP's question.
    – conquistador
    Mar 30, 2016 at 13:01

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