When trying to move emails to my personal folders, I am getting this message:
"Cannot move items. The item cannot be moved. It was either already moved or deleted, or access was denied."
This happens with both new emails from today, and older emails.
Did I change a setting somewhere without realizing it?
211 Answers
When the status of an email changes i.e. from unread to read and you try to move it, you'll get this message UNTIL you mark/unmark a different item as read/unread; which seems to get Outlook's unruly attention to another item - then you can move the item you originally wanted to move. It's a bug and I doubt anyone's even going to pay attention to it.
1I had this issue with Outlook 2013, but not for all messages. This was occurring for messages that either had an empty subject line or messages that came from my HR department (for some reason). I found that I couldn't move them directly to the Inbox folder of a pst archive file, but it would let me move the messages to the Deleted Items folder of my pst archive file. Once in the Deleted Items folder, I was able to move them to the Inbox folder of my pst archive file. At some point outlook complained about having to repair the pst archive file. I did that once, and all was well.
A solution from support.microsoft.com:
When you try to move or copy a message from your Inbox or a personal folder (.pst) file to a public folder, you may receive one of the following error messages:Can't move the items. The item could not be moved. It was either already moved or deleted, or access was denied.
This issue may occur if an explicit deny is set for the Everyone group on one of the following permissions on the root public folder tree:
Create public folder
Create top level public folder
Create named properties in the information storeTo resolve this issue, remove the explicit Deny for the Everyone group on these permissions:
Start Exchange System Manager.
Under the Folders object, right-click the Public Folders object, and then click Properties.
Click the Security tab, and then click the Everyone group.
Click to de-select the Deny check box for the three following permissions:
Create public folder Create top level public folder Create named properties in the information storeClick Apply, and then click OK to close the properties.
1.Close outlook, go to the local app datafile where the ost is kept - in windows 7/8/Vista, you can past %localappdata%\Microsoft\outlook in windows explorer then press Enter to open the folder.
2.Rename the ost file.
3.Restart outlook - it will recreate it, but will probably whine a little first.
Good look!
1I'd suggest closing Outlook and running a scanpst.exe tool to ensure there are no issues with pst file. This tool is present at
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\SCANPST.EXE
location on Windows XP.
New advice for an old thread...this note from MS Help message may also be of some use:
"This error may be the result of trying to delete more than 4,000 messages at one time. Outlook can delete (or move) no more than 4,000 messages when it is working with a server message store. To avoid this error, delete fewer than 4,000 messages in a single operation."
It happened to me a few times. I found out it was related to a specific pst folder so, I close it and re-open the .pst file and this has usually fixed the issue for me.
This methods worked for me using Office 15 running under Windows 7 professional.
Windows Knowledge Base How to repair your Outlook personal folder file (.pst)
It basically involves running the Inbox Repair Tool on the inbox folder. Basically the same as miten.morakhia answer, but getting the repair tool from a different location.
1Try dragging items to an email where they are added as attachments, then drag the attachments to another folder to create non-corrupted versions.
I know this is a very old question but seeing the issue in even Office365, I thought of adding easier solution that works for me.
If you have Outlook outlook.office365.com subscription or your corporation maintains webmail, login there and move the old mails out of Inbox to personal folder. This makes Outlook client on workstation resync.
Using Outlook with Office 365 and Windows 10 I have found a simple way which seems to work. Mark the email as Unread, and then Outlook lets it be moved. Then you can mark it as read in its new location without problems.
