Microsoft Office Outlook Team Blog

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Will this affect the overall performance of Outlook? I thought it was not recommended having so much items in your inbox or a single Outlook folder.

The way Outlook shows an extra header and padding when you group by conversation is so annoying.  Why not just do it like Thunderbird does?  No heading, only the subject of each message, with each message shown in a tree at the appropriate level.

Also, could you show a screenshot of the Define Views page?  When I try to replicate your settings in Outlook 2007, it insists on putting the text "Conversation: " or "Subject: " before the message subject.  Is there any way to get rid of that?  It's taking up valuable screen space.

Nice tip.  I love conversation view and cc myself on most of my outgoing mail just for this purpose.

Here's a DCR for you:

Add the ability to for these options:

AND Delete | Permanently delete parent message

UNLESS Parent message has attachments = TRUE

This will help to keep your inbox a little tidier.

Ellen, why not just create a search folder that combines the Inbox and Sent Items folders, with no search criteria? That would give you the same data, but without all that duplication that the rule creates.

Una sistemata alla posta ... è una di quelle cose che mi ero ripromesso di fare da diverso tempo ma che

Ultimate Inbox: Merging Inbox and Sent Items folders Previewing Attachments in Outlook How to back up

Hi,

I think I found a mistake in your instructions.

If you fill the checkbox "In folders other than the Inbox, save replies with original message", but clear the "Save copies of messages in Sent Items folder", (as you instructed), the sent emails are not saved with the original mesage after all. Once you enable the "Save copies of messages in Sent Item folder", the message is moved from the Sent Items folder to the appropiate folder.

Also, this has no affect/effect on the "Inbox" rule.

Whether mail is moved to the originail mail's folder or not, Outlook still puts an unread copy inside the mailbox.

This is what I've come up so far.

If I'm doing something wrong / there's a fix to this this behavoir, please post an update on the blog.

Ultimate inbox....sorry guys. This is nothing. When we see the day when we really can start using group mailboxes ? Today, you send email as the group mailbox and that file is saved into your personal sent items. What kind group mailbox that is ?

Yes, I can made a rule for myself and then it is copying the messages to that mailbox. But in real life, the problem is that we have 10000+ users who should be able to use own group mailboxes. And these users are changing their workstations. You should see that it is a mess.

Ultimate inbox sounds good, but you should see, that it is limited to use only in your personal mailbox. I might receive so less emails that this doesn't sound so cool. But this feature is very needed in the group mailboxes where everyone is able to see the threads.

Thanks for the article! I've been looking for just this and almost *had* to write a macro to get the functionality I knew I wanted but just couldn't find.

One more step that helped me out was to create a second rule of the form: Check message upon arrival -> From me -> Mark it as read.

Hopefully that helps out someone else too.

Any thoughts as to why my sent item filing doesn't work?  

I have checked "Save Copies of messages in Sent Item folder" and checked "In folders other than the Inbox, save replies with original message" but joyous Outlook persists with filing my sent items in my Sent Items folder. I'm sure this is a bug: Outlook 2003 used to work fine.

I use outlook 2007, but I'm not able to get the replies within each conversation thread to indent.  How is that done? Thanks in advance.

-Pete

You're kidding me, right? What an unbelievable hoop to have to jump thru. Is the same true for Outlook 2007? I'm presuming not because the article talks about 2003.

Ultimate inbox? The idea of the inbox is that it should be fairly empty so you can focus on incoming stuff, not full of everything you ever sent. I have the ultimate inbox... in Lotus Notes 8. And you don't have to fart around with it to do stuff like this.

Hi,

I have tried this technique, and it works except that when the emails show up in my inbox they show up deleted. I think I implemented the rule exactly as you described - any ideas as to why I am getting the mails deleted?

Thanks.

Keep it together Darren. It's not that big of a deal.

Another way is to use the "search folders" functionality.  Create a Search Folder, included the folders you want in "criteria" > "advanced settings" > "In Folder" "is (exactly)" "Inbox/Sent/Outbox/Drafts".

Name is something like "Inbox +".

You can then sort by conversation and you've got a chronological threaded view of your most important folders.

Benefit of this is that you haven't lost the categorization of 'sent' mail because they still exist in the correct folder.

I have synched a DL to Outlook successfully. It would work perfectly if I could move other Email messages into the SharePoint List folder that it made, so those Emails would also show up in the DL.

It seems that it would work both ways. Am I missing something? The new SP Lists folder is read only so I can't add anything.

Thanks,

lieboldk@comcast.net

Actually, it shouws how ugly Outlook rules still are.

The better and obviously easier way is just automatically moving ALL incoming messages from Inbox to some other folder (name it "Mailbox") and using the "In folders other than the Inbox, save replies with original message" feature. Voila! How many tricky rules I needed for this? ;)

Furthermore, every Outlook time/task mgmt training I encountered first and foremost told the Inbox must be sorted out and emptied before you start actually reading and taking actions on your emails.

Furthermore, if you want to see how really powerful rules should look like - check out RitLabs TheBAT program.

I wish I could use once a program that could manage emails like TheBAT and the rest (calendar/tasks/contacts partly) as Outlook...

I love style used in gmail. I wish outlook would be so lucid one day..

OK, you guys are obviously way ahead of me.  I agree with the person that said inboxes should be kept as clean as possible and this is suggesting adding copies of sent email to it.  Is there a way of to automatically delete an email in the inbox after it has been sent (with the exception of emails that have attachments)?  I tried to make a rule that would do that, but only found ways to make copies to the deleted folder, which leaves the original email in the inbox and defeats the purpose.

In case my last request was a bit confusing, I am rewording it:

I agree with the person that said inboxes should be kept as clean as possible and this is suggesting adding copies of sent email to it.  Is there a way to automatically delete an email in the inbox after you have replied to it(with the exception of emails that have attachments)?  I tried to make a rule that would do that, but only found ways to make copies to the deleted folder, which leaves the original email in the inbox and defeats the purpose.

The instructions don't work as is.  I agree with "msapc" 's suggestion.

1.  Create a new folder that will be used as your new Inbox.

2.  Create a new rule that moves all new mail to that new folder.

3.  Enable the option for "In folders other than the Inbox, save replies with original message"

Hello, all

I would agree that instead of rule you can create search folder on exchange mails .

However, I'm not clear how the threads were indented? That I can't achiev on my outlook 2007. That would be great if you could provide me what setting would cause to indent.

thanks,

I followed the instructions (in OL 2003) and added the Conversation column with Field Chooser. I also got the rules working so my sent messages appear in the Inbox and not in the Sent folder. However how do you get that cool indented tree view of all the messages? I am not seeing an option for this. Thanks...

>

http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/outlook/WindowsLiveWriter/UltimateInboxMergingInboxandSentItemsfol_E841/Ellen_4.jpg

Hats off to msapc, who's nailed this in a much better way, which also removes the problem of your inbox being full of unread messages from yourself. There's no way to solve that problem, as you can't apply a rule to mark them as read, because they're just copies, not emails received.

msapc said:

Actually, it shouws how ugly Outlook rules still are.

The better and obviously easier way is just automatically moving ALL incoming messages from Inbox to some other folder (name it "Mailbox") and using the "In folders other than the Inbox, save replies with original message" feature. Voila! How many tricky rules I needed for this? ;)

Furthermore, every Outlook time/task mgmt training I encountered first and foremost told the Inbox must be sorted out and emptied before you start actually reading and taking actions on your emails.

When I create a rule to mark sent item as read, it doesn't run unless I run rules manually?

set to run after message received

MSPAC's idea (just read) works better.

RE: GTD (empty inbox) this grouping is still a great idea. If you have project 'conversations' in a projects folder it is perfect.

Another example is a reference e-mail folder. If you as questions in forums and get updates e-mailed, you sometimes want to store the thread for reference.

Is there a way to do the following:

When the latest message in a conversation is read mark all previous messages in the conversation as read automatically ?

Thank you.

To get the indented behavior, go to View > Arrange By > Conversation.

If an email is sent from microsoft outlook 2003 on behalf of XYZ team (sales team). Then the sent item of only sender is updated and not of the entire group. Is there any way or setting that updates the sent item for all in group even if single user from group send an email.

Any suggestions or advice or help is appreciated.

Thanks

But there is a problem in using outlook this way. Here is an example.

If you send message with subject "Meeting" and receive replies for that it will become a conversation, so far very good.

But If after some days or weeks, you send/receive another email with same subject "Meeting", it will merge the same old conversation with the new one, which is very bad.

You got it? How can we avoid that?

with regard to msapc's solution, how do you get your initial sent message to be moved to your new mailbox folder too, if there is no reply to it?

and should you check "save a copy of sent item in sent folder"?

the guy who came up with the outlook rules code must be quite weird for forgetting such options...

Anyone knows how to move mails sitting in my Inbox to a "Personal Folder" that I create ?

Guess my company has a policy of keeping mails in Inbox for ~60 days or so. So I'd like to move mails older than that time frame & move it to a given folder.

I'd like the rules wizard or any other feature to do this every day, so I dont lose any of my mails in Inbox.

Any ideas ?