If Outlook’s Focused Inbox feature gives you grey hair and/or a headache – read this!
Microsoft Outlook applications on both computer and phone and also Outlook web version (webmail) have a “Focused Inbox” feature that aims to enhance email organization by showing the program’s inferred ‘most important’ messages first. Outlook sorts messages into “Focused” and “Other” categories.
However, the algorithm of this feature may not always be able to infer which messages are important to the user and, at worst, the algorithm can filter out important messages as well. For example, any automatic notifications can easily end up in the “Other” category. If you want to use the functionality of this feature, the algorithm can be trained. Training is done by checking the Other-section for messages that you want to come to the Focused Inbox – click a message with the right mouse button, select “Move”> “Always move to Focused inbox”.
A viable alternative is also to turn off the feature. You can do it like this:
- Outlook application
- View tab > ”Show Focused Inbox” – click this. If the background of the button is darker shade of grey, the feature is active.
- Outlook on the Web (webmail) and the new Outlook application
- In the upper right corner click on the wheel-icon/Settings > Mail > Layout > Focused Inbox – anc choose “Don’t sort my messages”
- Click ”Save”
- Outlook phone app
- Tap on the upper left corner your account icon
- Tap wheel-icon located on the left panel
- Check that ”Focused inbox” is switched off