Delete or move all Hotmail messages from a single person (particular email sender)
HotmailUniversity
When the new Hotmail was rolled out in the second half of 2010, it included a powerful new feature called the "Sweep menu" that allows to quickly process emails in batches; part of this functionality extended to include a mouse-over fly-out menu that lets you take action on multiple email messages at the same time. In this tutorial, we will show you how to, with just a few clicks, find all emails from a certain sender, and either delete all of them, or move them to a certain folder (including the "Deleted" folder!)
On this page: Delete all messages from particular sender | Move all emails from same person
Delete all messages sent from a particular sender
Once you are inside an email folder in your Hotmail account, find one message sent from the person in question. Then, hover for a couple of seconds above the sender's name or email address (in bold), and a menu will appear, just like this:
That menu contains several commands relating to that particular email sender.
Notice that the last command, at the bottom of the menu, reads "Delete all from...". Click on it, and don't worry, you'll have the option to back out of the deletion. Windows Live Hotmail will now open a confirmation dialog that gives you a few choices:
Tip: for this tutorial, and if you accidentally open this dialog box in the future, know that nothing will happen to your emails if you click "Cancel" or the "x" close button!
If you click on the "Delete all" button, all messages from the sender in question will be deleted (notice that his/her email address is shown on the Deletion confirmation dialog). Depending on time of the day (peak time or not), and number of matched messages, Hotmail will take a few seconds to work on this task, and move all these messages to the "Deleted" folder - from where you can restore all or some of them if needed.
Tip: messages from that person inside other folders will not be deleted. To delete all emails from a particular sender, across your entire Hotmail account, do this instead: search for emails by sender, and delete these messages from the search results page itself.
Delete and block an email sender at the same time!
Since Hotmail assumes that you want to delete email messages from an undesirable sender, it also shows a "Also block future messages" checkbox, unchecked by default. If you check it before clicking on Delete all, Hotmail will also add that particular email address to your "Blocked Senders" list, a feature we'll cover in a later tutorial.
Move all emails from a certain person into another folder
The menu that appears when you hover for a couple of seconds above the name or email address of a message also includes a related command: "Move all from".
As soon as you click on it, Hotmail will show the following "Move all of them" dialog:
First, confirm that the right email address is selected under "You're about to move messages in this folder that are from the following senders". Then, pick a destination folder under the "Please select a folder to move them to" dropdown menu, and double-check your choice before going any further.
Create an email rule on-the-fly!
Notice that Hotmail also includes a "Also move future messages" checkbox, which is unchecked by default. Ticking this checkbox allows you to create a mail filter on-the-fly, to automatically move all emails from that person to a predetermined folder! To learn more about this auto-sorting functionality included in all Windows Live accounts, see: "Create email rules in Hotmail" (lets you to do *much* more than filtering by sender).
Once you have made your choices, click on the "Move all" button, and Hotmail will start moving all messages from that particular sender, and in the current folder, to the destination folder you picked. Depending on the current server load, and the number of messages you have, Hotmail will take a few seconds processing the move of matched emails to their new home - be it the Deleted folder or a custom folder you created!
Final Tip: remember when we talked about the "Sweep" menu at the beginning of this tutorial? It is because the "Move all emails from" command and "Delete all emails from" functionality are also available under the Sweep menu!
If you use the Sweep menu, however, keep in mind that you will first have to have a message currently selected to get the same results (otherwise, you'll get a "You need to select at least one message before you can do this. To select one or more messages, just check the box before each message" error message from Hotmail).