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Two days ago, I lost all of the Outlook email rules in my main Inbox. Why did this happen and can I restore them?
Sending, receiving, and organizing email in Outlook.com
They were created in Outlook New. When I first discovered that all of the rules were missing in Outlook New, I also checked in Outlook.com and they were also missing in Outlook.com. I hope that helps.
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Rules can disappear or appear missing if they were deleted, if you changed between Outlook.com/new Outlook/classic Outlook, if the rules were client-side rules created in classic Outlook, or if an account/sync issue was using a third-party app.
Regarding restoring them: Unfortunately, Outlook.com does not provide a “deleted rules” recovery folder like deleted emails. Microsoft states that rules import/export is available only in classic Outlook, not new Outlook or Outlook on the web.
I see that you marked the answer as not resolving the issue. Unfortunately, as mentioned before, if the rules were deleted from Outlook on the web / Outlook.com, there is no separate “recover deleted rules” option available in Outlook.com.
If the rules are no longer listed there, they will need to be recreated manually. I understand this is inconvenient, but there is no supported restore path for deleted Outlook.com rules.
But they weren’t deleted. One evening they were working and the next morning they were all gone
I understand your concern. As mentioned earlier, this can happen for different reasons, but one of the most common causes is that the account was also being used in a third-party email app, and the rules may have been deleted from there.
Unfortunately, if the rules are no longer available in Outlook.com / Outlook on the web, there is no option to recover them. Classic Outlook for Windows can restore rules only if they were exported previously, but that does not apply to Outlook on the web.
In this case, the rules would need to be recreated manually.