Our mobile employees use their iPhone to scan documents and then email to their Outlook accounts. As a result, the scanned documents will end up in both their Inbox and Sent folders, which will take up their mailbox space very fast. Is there a way to configure outlook to automatically permanently delete an email that contains specified text strings (in its subject and body) in the Sent folder? Anybody knows? We use Outlook 2010. Thank you for any kind response!

Have you tried to use Outlook rules? File | Rules and Alerts | New Rule

Hi,

There're rules to delete emails you receive, but unfortunately, there's no such rule to auto-delete sent mail within sent items folder.

However, we can use a script rule to achieve the goal. The following macro will set the message to expire in 1 day. You can use .5 to expire the message after 12 hours.

If you use conditions in the rule to filter the messages, you can remove the IfThen and End If lines from the code.

Sub SetExpire(Item As Outlook.MailItem)
 
If Left(LCase(Item.Subject), 7) = "weather" Then
    Item.ExpiryTime = Now + 1
    Item.Save
End If
 
End Sub

Reference: http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/rules/create-rule-to-expire-mail-after-a-number-of-days/

Please Note: Since the web site is not hosted by Microsoft, the link may change without notice. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy of this information.

Since we are not the best resource for coding, if you need further assistance regarding the coding portion, I'd recommend you post a new question in the Outlook for Developers forum:

https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/home?forum=outlookdev

The reason why we recommend posting appropriately is you will get the most qualified pool of respondents, and other partners who read the forums regularly can either share their knowledge or learn from your interaction with us. Thank you for your understanding.

Steve Fan
TechNet Community Support

Thank you Steve! I posted the question to the Outlook for Developers forum as per your recommendation.