why delete button is inactive in outlook 2010?

I've been using Microsoft Outlook for many years now. I like to keep all the e-mails I receive, never delete anything (I receive 50-200 e-mails a day). For the purpose of efficiency, what I do is delete (i.e. click the "Delete" button on my keyboard) every e-mail I receive that does not require special treatment or filing. Once a week or so I copy all the "Deleted Items" folder to a big folder I have called "All Non-Filed Mail". If I encounter a spam e-mail or some other mail that "really" requires deletion, I just use Shift-Delete.

I'm well aware of this method's hazards (e.g. the risk of cleaning the folder by mistake), however it's the only single-key operation I know of to remove an e-mail from my Inbox (Ctrl-something is not a single key for this purpose), and I've grown accustomed to it.

I wanted to know if there's any way to configure the operation of the Delete button to send an item to a specific folder?

I currently work in Outlook 2007, but I'm hoping to receive answers that will also be relevant for other versions.

Would the auto archive facility be sufficient? You can set auto archive specifically to "items older than 1 day or week" on the Deleted Items folder. Even turn off archive on other folders if you didn't want to use the archive facility else where.

What you are doing now is truly the best answer to your question. To avoid emptying your deleted items folder you can change the default action in Tools | Options and select the Oter tab. Uncheck the box beside "Empty the deleted items folder when exiting".

I don't know what kind of percentage of mail that ends up in the All Non-Filed Mail folder. But given that this percentage is higher than mail that gets sorted (could also be viable regardless of percentage), then you could consider creating a rule to store all received mail into the All Non-Filed Mail folder, and just sort / label all other mail. All unprocessed mail would then be marked as unread, and all you have to do is file away those mails that need filing and not touch those that don't

I assume you have to read / open / sort all mail before taking any action, so this way you remove the need to delete, and then move all non--filed mail, and the obvious hazard of the "delete all"-scenario.

Sounds like a good candidate for my Outlook VBScript Macro that I put together a few years ago based upon a few sample codes floating around. This macro currently moves the selected messages or current open message to a PST file I created, called "Archive Personal Folders." This can be changed to any folder you want. Putting this macro into your Outlook will get you started. You'll need to modify the code to do what you want. Also, you need to generate a digital signing certificate to sign the code to make it easy. I put a button on my toolbar to run this script, so I can move a bunch of messages at once to my Archive folder.

Sub MoveSelectedMessagesToArchiveInbox()
    On Error Resume Next
    Dim objFolder As Outlook.MAPIFolder, objInbox As Outlook.MAPIFolder
    Dim objNS As Outlook.NameSpace, objItem As Outlook.MailItem

    Set objNS = Application.GetNamespace("MAPI")
    Set objInbox = objNS.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderInbox)
    Set objFolder = objNS.Folders("Archive Personal Folders").Folders("Inbox")

    'Assume this is a mail folder
    If objFolder Is Nothing Then
        MsgBox "This folder doesn't exist!", vbOKOnly + vbExclamation, "INVALID FOLDER"
    End If

    Select Case TypeName(Outlook.Application.ActiveWindow)
        'Viewing Inbox, so act upon selected messages
        Case "Explorer"
            If Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection.Count = 0 Then
                'Require that this procedure be called only when a message is selected
                Exit Sub
            End If

            For Each objItem In Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection
                If objFolder.DefaultItemType = olMailItem Then
                    If objItem.Class = olMail Then
                        objItem.Move objFolder
                    End If
                End If
            Next
        'A message is open, act upon current open message
        Case "Inspector"
            Set objItem = Outlook.Application.ActiveInspector.CurrentItem
                If objFolder.DefaultItemType = olMailItem Then
                    If objItem.Class = olMail Then
                        objItem.Move objFolder
                    End If
                End If
        Case Else
            ' Do Nothing
    End Select

    Set objItem = Nothing
    Set objFolder = Nothing
    Set objInbox = Nothing
    Set objNS = Nothing
End Sub