Outlook Web – OWA (Office 365 for Enterprise)



I need to move emails from the inbox to a subfolder on a regular basis as part of an ‘archiving’ task.

The inbox account is a catchall which is consumed by some automation software, and needs to be maintained fairly regularly.

The inbox receives approx. 32,000 emails per month, and these emails need to be moved into a subfolder for each month.

At the moment the only way we can do this is by manually selecting the first email in the Inbox list (for the archive month, e.g September), hold Shift+Down for a few seconds to select 50-100 emails, and repeat until approx. 500 are selected, then move these to the archive folder (e.g September). Repeat until all that months email have been moved.
I can’t find a bulk way of doing this.

I have tried setting up a rule to move email between certain dates (e.g After 8th Sept – Before 10th September – therefore selecting 9th September), but the rule just spins and spins and doesn’t complete.

There is no way I can find, to select all emails within a certain month, or day or week etc and bulk move them.

This is all in OWA, not Outlook Client.

This method filters messages received during a certain month in Outlook 2019. Not sure about Outlook OWA.


In the search box:



Received:April 2022


Note that there is no space after the colon.



If this doesn't work, could you use Shift + PageDown instead of Shift + Down to speed up the manual selection process?

Thanks very much for your reply!

I tried the search option, but it doesn't filter anything, it just shows all the emails from Today -> the oldest (currently end of Sept)

I did try using Page Down before but it doesn't do anything. Page down is a secondary function on my keyboard (laptop) with the down arrow.

If i press shift + fn + down - nothing in the list gets selected.

fn lock is turned off.

I tested page down / and shift + fn + down in Excel and it works perfectly.

I guess OWA / browser doesn't support this key combo?

I have tried doing this task in the Outlook client, but it freezes and becomes unresponsive due to the volume of emails in the account

In general, I find web-based email programs to be very limited. I can do more in one minute with the version of Outlook running on my computer than I can in an hour with web-based email programs. At best, the web-based programs are like using a shoe as a hammer... At worst, they are like using a shoe as a screwdriver!

I tend to agree! In my experience working in older exchange environments, OWA seems to have a direct connection to exchange, so tasks are performed more immediately, whereas in the client, it's cached and has to process / send the data back to the exchange server, which can lead to the application freezing up.

I can get the selections I want in Outlook client, but can't move the emails. (it freezes / hangs / doesn't work)

I can move the emails in OWA but can't easily get the selections i need!

I wonder whether running a pst file repair might help.


Part of my regular Outlook maintenance involves permanently deleting old messages, especially ones with giant attachments, followed by compressing the mailbox. I'm not sure it will help in your situation. However, this two-step process is the only way I know to prevent my .pst file from growing too large.