Great questions. This is one of those situations where it feels more dangerous than it actually is.

First, when you're working with a linked Outlook folder in Access, you are not copying the emails into Access. You're just looking at them through a window. The data still lives in Outlook. It's just like running a query in Access. The data still lives in the table, but you can view and interact with that data in the query.

So if you delete an email in the Access table, yes, it deletes the actual email in Outlook too. It should go to the Deleted Items folder, just like if you deleted it directly in Outlook. From there, it behaves exactly the same as normal Outlook mail.

Now the important part: if you delete the linked table in Access, nothing happens to your emails. You're only removing the shortcut, not the data. Think of it like deleting a desktop shortcut to a file. The file itself is still perfectly safe. There's no mass email apocalypse.

If you want to "unlink" it first, you don't have to do anything special. Deleting the linked table is the unlink.

As for the MAPI profile option, that just tells Access which Outlook profile to use when opening that link. If you only have one Outlook profile, you'll never notice a difference. If you have multiple profiles (work, personal, etc.), storing the profile name ensures Access always connects to the correct one instead of prompting or guessing.

Hope that clears it up!