Why Outlook Item Cannot Be Saved to This Folder?

Mark Regan
Published: February 6th, 2026 • 6 Min Read

If you are finding the answer to the question of why your Outlook item cannot be saved to this folder. Then, don’t worry, you are going to read the right blog post. When you are trying to save any item in the outlook, such as an email, calendar event, or task. Then, you will get a pop-up named “Outlook item cannot be saved to this folder.”

Microsoft Outlook provides multiple features to both business and personal users. When we see this kind of error, it’s become annoying situation. The “item cannot be saved to this folder” error generally means the folder you are using is suffering from some technical issues or errors that will happen due to other reasons.

In this guide, we are going to discuss common and other reasons. Additionally, we also share both tested manual and professional solutions to resolve Outlook shows item cannot be saved to this folder error.

Major Causes That Lead Outlook Item Cannot Be Saved

If the user’s mailbox exceeds, then in this case the problem also arises.
When the public folder size limit settings are not properly configured, then storing large item become problematic.
If the mailbox or public folder is corrupted, then emails are not able to be saved or posted properly.
You don’t have the required permissions, especially if you don’t have full permission of the mailbox or folder, then this will happen.
Any transportation rule is applied on the exchange server that is specific to a size or content type, then it will restrict, which will cause your saving operation to fail.
If the email format doesn’t match Exchange email formats, such as HTML or RTF, then the error “cannot be saved” will be displayed.
Sometimes exchange server or Outlook client will also create problems specially when the patches or updates are missing.

These were the common and other reasons, which is why you see the “item cannot be saved to this folder” message in your Outlook application.

The upcoming section will guide you on how to fix outlook item cannot be saved to this folder error, with the use of manual solutions.

Fixing Outlook Item Cannot Be Saved to This Folder Manually

To solve item cannot be saved issue manually, you need to follow all the solutions with detailed instructions below.

1^st Solution: Profile Reset/Recreate

Close the Outlook application on your Windows.
Then, go to the “Control Panel” and click on the “Mail” option.
After that, click on the “show profile” option.
Now, click on the “add,” create a new profile, and add here.
Then, open the Outlook application and check.

2^nd Solution: Repair Data Files

Close the Outlook application on your computer.
Then, open the “Scanpst.exe” tool from this location on your system.
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\root\OfficeXX (XX version number)
After that, run the “Scanpst.exe” and select “Outlook data file (.pst or.ost).”
Then, click on the start and wait for the start process.
If you find any errors, repair them and reopen Outlook.

3^rd Solution: Clear Cache

Close the Outlook application on your desktop PC.
Then, go to the “File Explorer” and open the path:
%localappdata%\Microsoft\Outlook
Here, you will get a folder named “RoamCache.” Delete it.
After that, reopen Outlook and check if your problem is solved or not
Done! By following these suggested solutions, your “item cannot be saved to this folder” issue will be solved.

Using these manual solutions, you will easily fix the Outlook shows item cannot be saved to this folder error. But these solutions have certain limitations that you must be aware of.

Limitations of Manual Solutions

The manual solution requires re-configuring the email account, which becomes a time-consuming process.
If the issue is related to the server or network, then this solution doesn’t work.
When the server file is corrupted, there is a high chance of data loss, and this solution cannot fix it.
The manual solution is slow in case of bulk data files and is not useful for technical users.
Clearing Outlook’s cache may temporarily fix the issue, but the underlying problem may persist.

These were the limitations of the manual solution to fix the outlook item cannot be saved to this folder issue. However, you can try the next tested solution that is described in the next section.

Fix Outlook Item Cannot Be Saved to This Folder Professionally

As of now, we already tested all the mentioned manual methods, and we know their limitations. To overcome all of this, you can try the BitRecover PST Repair Tool to fix outlook shows item cannot be saved to this folder error. This program simply scans PST files and repairs them in case of corruption, and restores all emails, contacts, and tasks of the PST file. It also recovers missing items in case of account corruption and solves your “cannot be saved” issue.

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Steps of Professional Method

Download and open the repair tool on your Windows OS.
Select between file and folder options and click on the next button.
Afterward, select the folder where you want to save your item.
Then, select the saving format as “PST” and set the destination path for it.
Finally, click on the repair button below to start the repair process.
Done! Your repair process has begun; you will get the repaired file in a few seconds.

Strengths of Professional Tool

It supports both ANSI and Unicode PST files with no size limits.
You can repair bulk PST files at once and save your important time.
This tool can repair corrupted Outlook PST files and restore your data efficiently.
It has a filter option that allows users to repair selective data from specific areas like date, sender, subject, etc.
Using this tool, users can save repaired data to any location of their computer system with the original folder.
It supports repair on encrypted PST files, which allows users to repair data from password‑protected PST files.

These were the benefits of using this professional solution to fix the Outlook item cannot be saved to this folder issue.

Final Thoughts

In this blog post, we explain why your Outlook items cannot be saved to this folder and how to fix this problem. We relate the users’ pain points and share the major causes of the appearance of this error. Additionally, we fixed the issue using three manual solutions, but we found some challenges while fixing the issue, such as that setting email account is time-consuming, if the problem is from the server side, then this does not work, and others. However, when we used the described professional solution to solve this problem, we found that the solution is a reliable and safe option for folder repairs.