How To Recover Deleted Contact Group in Outlook 2016 – A Fresh Perspective

Microsoft Outlook lets users create a distribution list from their Contacts list and store it in the Contacts folder. Users of Microsoft Outlook 2016 often face the deletion of contacts issue in certain situations while managing the Outlook Address Book. There may multiple cases in which Outlook 2016 contacts group gets deleted. See how to recover contact groups Outlook 2016, 2013, 2010 etc. Before that, let’s see some of the causes for deletion of Outlook contacts:

• Accidental Deletion: It is possible to accidentally delete an important contacts group/ distribution list while archiving or unarchiving Outlook 2016 personal folders.
• Virus Attack: Deadly virus/ malware attack on the Windows system automatically infects its data with the PST file and can delete some personal folders like contact groups. It also may include the Contacts folder in Outlook 2016 without giving any prior notification.
• Size Limit: Exceeding the storage limit of Outlook 2016 PST file, also may corrupt the PST file because of which users cannot access the contacts group.

When users delete a contact, it directly moves to Deleted Items folder in the mailbox, just like a deleted email message. Deleted Items folder is the first place where you have to go if you are trying to search a deleted contact. If the contact or contact group is there then, below given is how to recover deleted contacts group Outlook 2016, 2013 versions it:

Expert Approach To Recover Deleted Contact Group From Outlook

Retrieve Deleted Contact Group in Outlook 2016
Quick Solution: Accidentally deleted Microsoft Outlook PST data items like emails, contacts, calendars, tasks, notes, etc. are every common. But there are times when users need to recover permanently deleted Outlook emails, contacts from PST file in a most urgent manner. Retrieving a lost or deleted data without any data loss is a difficult task. The best Outlook Recovery application suggested here will help to restore hard deleted data items from Microsoft Outlook PST files efficiently.

Manual methods are lengthy and consume a lot of time to execute. Hence, if users want to perform the contact group recovery quickly and accurately then, we recommend to use Outlook Recovery Tool. It enables users to recover hard/ permanently deleted contacts and other data items of Outlook PST even without resulting any kind of data loss. After performing deleted items recovery the software provides multiple export options i.e., PST, MSG, HTML, EML. The best part about this tool is that it supports all versions of Microsoft Outlook and Windows OS. The Software may help you to repair Outlook PST file when data file faces corruption issues.

Note: All these methods also apply to recover deleted emails, calendar, or tasks.

Recover a Distribution List From the Deleted Items Folder

1. In Outlook application, navigate to the list of emails folders, click Deleted Items Folder
2. If you have several deleted items then, you can enter the contact’s name in Search Deleted Items box to find it
3. Select all the contacts or contact group and click on Move >> Other Folder
4. In Move Items wizard, click Contacts folder, then hit the OK button. After this, the contact group will be moved from Deleted Items to My Contacts folder

What if the Contact Group is Not Present in Deleted Items folder?

“Hello, I think that I made a bad manipulation, I wanted to remove some individual contacts from a Contact group in my Outlook 2016. While doing this, I have just seen that all the contacts have been removed, not only from my Contact group but also from the main Contact list. How the heck I can restore accidentally deleted contact group Outlook? It is not under Deleted Items folder at all. It only shows email messages but, not contacts. Is it possible to undo deleted contact group in Outlook? Thanks.”

Recover a Distribution List After Emptying The Deleted Items Folder

The retention depends on the settings of the Outlook email account. However, in a home or personal account, the contact will be deleted permanently once the Deleted Items folder emptied or after closing the Microsoft Outlook application. Now, the question is how to recover deleted contact group Outlook 2016 that is no longer in Deleted Items folder?

Well, if you are using MS Exchange Server 2007/ 2003/ 2000 then, MS Office Outlook 2007 allows to recover permanently deleted data items in Outlook account.

Note: The Exchange administrator defines a retention time on the server running Exchange for the permanently deleted items. After that time elapses, you cannot retrieve deleted contact group.

Below are the guidelines to recover a distribution list:

1. In Outlook, navigate to the email folder list, and click Deleted Items
2. Make sure, the Home option is selected and click Recover Deleted Items From Server

Important: If the ‘Recover Deleted Items From Server’ option is grayed out or is not there then, you might be working in offline. To work online, turn on online mode.

3. Select the contacts you want to recover and click on Restore Selected Items. Hit OK button

Where Do Recovered Contacts Go?

After recovering contacts from the Recoverable Items folder, they will move to Deleted Items folder. Now, you can move them to another folder simply.

Summing It Up

Sometimes users spend their so much time in maintaining the distribution list and accidental deletion of this list feels like a calamity. In such case, users search for how to recover deleted contact group Outlook 2016. So, this writes up comprises all the information about the same issue along with solutions to recover a deleted distribution list from Outlook account or from the respective PST file.