If you set up outlook with an IMAP account, there's no way to tell outlook to send an email to trash on deletion. Most email clients will happily do it, but outlook only has the default mark for deletion and purge options.

After hours and hours of struggling, I managed to do it in outlook what is normally one click in other mail clinets: If you want to use an IMAP account and still use the trash for deleted items, you need to do the following:

Create a macro that copies the email into the Trash folder, then deletes it - ie. marks it for deletion Create a Digital Certificate for your macro, so that it won't get disabled next time you start Outlook There is a view option in outlook that hides the 'marked for deletion' items, but it will hide the preview pane, so: Create a custom view,  enable the preview pane, create a new filter that only shows items that are not marked for deletion Create a Trash folder on your IMAP account (if you haven't got one already) in customise toolbar remove the delete button Create a new button (with a delete icon) that runs your macro The delete key will still work the old way, so put 4 razor blades around the delete key. It will help you learn not to use it.

Here's the vb script that finally worked (copy and pasted together from scripts I found on the internet):

{code} Sub MoveToTrash() On Error Resume Next Dim objFolder As Outlook.MAPIFolder Dim objNS As Outlook.NameSpace, objItem As Outlook.MailItem Set objNS = Application.GetNamespace("MAPI") Set objFolder = objNS.Folders("imapmail").Folders("Inbox").Folders("Trash") If objFolder Is Nothing Then MsgBox "This folder doesn't exist!", vbOKOnly + vbExclamation, "INVALID FOLDER" End If If Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection.Count = 0 Then Exit Sub End If For Each objItem In Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection If objFolder.DefaultItemType = olMailItem Then If objItem.Class = olMail Then objItem.UnRead = False objItem.Move objFolder objItem.Delete End If End If Next Set objItem = Nothing Set objFolder = Nothing Set objNS = Nothing End Sub {/code}