Stop office365 storing outgoing messages in SENT when using SMTP

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I have a web application that sends significant volumes of emails, using SMTP. The SMTP server is Office365.com and this is storing copies of sent emails in the SENT folder when viewed in Outlook.office365.com

I can periodically using the web interface to delete out sent emails older than 3, 6 or 12 months (or all) but this will always risk the total mailbox size exceeding limits (as happened today). Outlook "rules" don't apply to the sent folder, and only built-in retention policies can be applied to that folder; so I can't setup a "delete after 1 day" policy and apply it.

Is there any way I can configure things, either via the web interface OR via the SMTP send itself, to prevent messages sent by SMTP being saved in the SENT folder?

What I have tried:

* Set up a custom retention policy, but these can't be applied to the SENT folder.
* Searched all other user settings in the web interface.
* Googled for answers but nobody seems to know a method to do this.

Posted 19-Jan-23 7:50am

DerekT-P

Updated 19-Jan-23 9:08am

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Dave Kreskowiak 19-Jan-23 14:54pm

Show the code you're using to setup and send the email.

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Dave Kreskowiak · Answer 1 · 2023-01-19T09:08:00

Solution 1

If you're using the SMTP route into Outlook365, you do not have the option of turning SentItems off. On normal servers, using SMTP does not put anything in SentItems, but Office365 is not the standard email environment the web uses. Things are a little ... different.

To get the option to stop saving a copy of the email in SentItems, you would have to use the Exchange WebServices client. There's it's really easy to not save emails in SentItems. Once your email and connection are setup, you just call the Send method instead of SendAndSaveCopy method.

Posted 19-Jan-23 9:08am

Dave Kreskowiak

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DerekT-P 20-Jan-23 5:05am

Thanks Dave. The app sends emails via one of a number of different webservers (customer notices via one, staff via another and support a third) so I would prefer to keep it all the same code. I'll stick with SMTP and diarise a note to clear the SENT folder every 3 months. Why MS has to change the standard action of an SMTP send is beyond me.

Dave Kreskowiak 20-Jan-23 19:15pm

If you're using SMTP, you don't have the option of turning that off in your code.

It has to be done server-side through some config policy.

DerekT-P 21-Jan-23 8:12am

Yep, I understand. I mean I'll go in manually every so often and empty out the sent folder. The issue is not so much that I don't want to keep a copy, but that I don't want the folder to hit the (any) storage limit, on what is otherwise an unmonitored email account.

Stop office365 storing outgoing messages in SENT when using SMTP

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Stop office365 storing outgoing messages in SENT when using SMTP

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