Feb 07
Sorting your mail in Outlook
(or, how I learned to love my Inbox)
Some time ago, I stumbled on to a way of sorting my mail in Outlook that actually makes me [more?] productive and able to deal with the constant torrent that is unleashed up on me daily.
It’s very simple, but works amazingly well, and I am inspired by this post at 43folders to post it here for further review/comments:
- Go to View…Arrange By…and Custom.
- Choose “Group by” and set it to Conversation (Ascending). Hit OK.
- Then choose “Sort”, and set it to Received (Descending). Hit OK.
Now all conversations will be grouped together, and any new mail that comes into a conversation will make the conversation jump to the top of the Inbox. This works great for those times when there are 30 mails on a subject, and you can confidently delete all but the most current with a single action, knowing that you will have the most up to date information.
Let me know if this helps/hurts your daily routine, or if you have other tips on taming your Inbox!
Technorati Tags: outlook, email, inbox
February 7th, 2006 at 5:50 pm
That was helpful, thanks! I like the GMail effect.
February 27th, 2006 at 6:17 pm
Hi,
When I try this with Outlook 2003, it groups the messages by Conversation ok, but even though it says it is sorting by ‘Received’, the date on the first message is 25/02/2003, the next is 27/02/2006 and the next 28/04/04. These are all single message conversations. The messages within conversations do appear to be sorted.
What I would like is for the top conversation to have the latest message, the next conversation to have the next latest message etc. Is this possible?
February 28th, 2006 at 9:13 am
Mark,
Not sure why that is. I definitely have mine with the newest mails at the top of the list. Maybe switch to a different view, and then try the Customize again? Or try creating a specific new view and apply those settings?
February 28th, 2006 at 11:35 am
Mark,
I subscribe to multiple daily emails with the subject line in the following format: “[Company name]: [Edition-specific title]” I.E. “ESPN: For Tuesday February 28.” When Outlook groups by conversation, it does so based on the entire Subject line, so because the Subject line of each email is different, each new daily email starts a new thread. Is there a way of telling Outlook to pay attention only to the first word of a Subject line when grouping by conversation?
Thanks,
Jeff
February 28th, 2006 at 7:14 pm
Interestingly it seems to work in my personal folders (ie local ones) but not the ones located on the server still. Looks like I have to miss out on this
February 28th, 2006 at 8:21 pm
Mark,
How odd! I’m using it right now on my folders. The only difference I can think of is that I’m using “Cached Exchange Mode”, perhaps that has something to do with it? Are you even using exchange?
Feel free to YahooIM me at richardtgoodwin
February 28th, 2006 at 10:16 pm
Not using exchange, the backend email system we use here is developed by my company using an imap4 solution, although I’m surprised that this is a factor, but I can’t think of any other reason. C’est la vie, as they say.
March 1st, 2006 at 9:17 am
A few things I’d like to tweak on this setup but am not having luck.
1. I setup a rule to copy all my sent email into my inbox so my portion of the conversation shows up in the conversation as well. However, I don’t want my own messages to be shown as unread after I sent them. How do I get outlook to copy the message to my inbox and mark it as read?
2. I want my messages to show up in a different colour than ones from other people. I’ve tried adding rules in automatic formatting to do this but they don’t seem to work. Suggestions?
March 2nd, 2006 at 11:47 am
A few things I’d like to tweak on this setup but am not having luck.
1. I setup a rule to copy all my sent email into my inbox so my portion of the conversation shows up in the conversation as well. However, I don’t want my own messages to be shown as unread after I sent them. How do I get outlook to copy the message to my inbox and mark it as read?
2. I want my messages to show up in a different colour than ones from other people. I’ve tried adding rules in automatic formatting to do this but they don’t seem to work. Suggestions?
March 28th, 2006 at 2:59 pm
Hi guys, Im trying to sort descending by DATE, and that does not work… ascedning works apparantly.. any insight?
July 19th, 2006 at 8:45 am
I can’t get the /- threaded view to work with conversation sorting. One method manages to indent messages in the same conversation. We always CC our own inbox when we reply to messages, and these messages are not sorted with the conversations, they float at the top. So, this doesn’t work very well…or, at least, not for everyone.
November 21st, 2006 at 8:07 pm
Thanks for the tip. Now if only threads with more than one message were considered ‘conversations’. Says a lot about the MS mindset…
September 19th, 2007 at 4:51 am
Exploring this further in Outlook 2007 you can design a current view which allows you to jump back to a simple mode and also filter out all the send to mail. This is useful when you only want to see the received mail in the inbox.
September 27th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Sorry to bump up an old topic, if wordpress does that. But I just recently decided to find some sort of Inbox Zen. I saw that people here were having problems with the sorting isssue.
I have a solution.
Head to http://on10.net/Blogs/sarahintampa/customized-outlook-conversations-view/ a site I found during my search and follow the instructions, this includes the sent items folder and your inbox folder, ( I threw in a few others also, I had setup rules that moved emails to organize things better ) but the sorting by conversation index works like a charm. It appears that conversation indexes are given to each conversation when it is first started in your inbox. This way any new convos will show first not convos alphabetically, and any old ones will be lower. Still though if you get a New email for an old Convo ( or just the subject that was the same ) you will end up losing it in the organization.
December 11th, 2007 at 3:16 am
I am grouping by conversation (ascending), sorting by Received (ascending) which is the way I want it, i.e. newest conversation appears at the top but within each conversation the earliest date eamil is shown first. This way I can read the thread starters email first.
The only problem is when I select this folder outlook automatically takes me to the bottom of the conversations, I always want to be at the top with the newest conversation without having to slide all the way back up again.
Any ideas anyone?
February 26th, 2008 at 7:14 am
I am trying to delete a conversation from the main/top thread but it does not work. I have to delete each message individually and cannot delete the entire group/thread. Although if i drag and drop the thread from the top level it works. Is there a fix for this?
I’m using Outlook 2000 with sp3.
February 26th, 2008 at 9:10 am
Barry,
I’m not sure honestly; I haven’t used Outlook 2k in some time
I frequently delete by selecting the “group” header in 2k3 and 2k7.
March 27th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
What I find useful with Outlook 2003 is to Group by Conversation
(ascending) and then Sort by Conversation Index (ascending).
If you move your From field to the far left (or at least to be
the 1st variable text field on the left) and you format the
From field to be left justified, large threads with multpile
subthreads will line up correctly in th From field.