Outlook Made Easy: Organise Your Conversations and Emails with One Simple View
Mastering conversation view in Outlook: Keep your emails organised and easier to follow
Managing a busy inbox can often feel like a never-ending task. With so many threads, responses, and follow-ups, it’s easy to lose track of important details. Fortunately, Outlook’s Conversation View feature can help you stay on top of your email game by organising related messages into neat, threaded conversations.
Conversation View in Outlook groups related email messages together into a single thread, making it easier to follow ongoing discussions. Instead of sifting through a cluttered inbox filled with multiple messages from the same conversation, Conversation View consolidates all replies, forwards, and original emails into one organised set of messages. This way, you can see the entire conversation history at a glance.
How to Enable Conversation View in Outlook
Enabling Conversation View is quick and easy. Here’s how you can turn it on:
Launch Outlook and navigate to your Inbox (or any folder you want to apply Conversation View to). At the top of the window, click on the View tab. This is where you can manage how your emails are displayed.
In the Messages group, check the box next to Show as Conversations. You’ll then be asked if you want to apply Conversation View to the current folder or all folders. Select your preference and click OK.
That’s it! Once enabled, your emails will be grouped into conversations, making it easier to track replies, follow-ups, and key details from the thread.
Understanding the Conversation View Interface
When you enable Conversation View, you’ll notice a few changes to the way your emails appear:
Conversation Header: At the top of a conversation, you’ll see a “conversation header” that contains the subject line and the number of messages in that thread. The header provides a quick overview of the entire conversation.
Expanded vs. Collapsed: By default, Conversation View groups emails in an expanded or collapsed format. An expanded conversation shows all emails in the thread, while a collapsed conversation only displays the most recent message. You can easily expand or collapse conversations by clicking the small arrow next to the thread.
Threaded Emails: Within the conversation, the emails are listed in chronological order. Replies and forwards will appear below the original message, allowing you to follow the conversation’s flow with ease.
Different Colours and Indicators: Emails within a conversation are often colour-coded, with unread messages highlighted or marked in bold. This helps you spot important messages quickly.
Why use the Conversation View
Eliminates Email Clutter: Instead of having dozens of emails from the same conversation cluttering your inbox, Conversation View consolidates everything into one tidy thread. This reduces the need for constant searching and scrolling through your inbox, giving you more time to focus on what matters.
Easier to track conversations: When you're participating in ongoing email threads, it can be difficult to track the flow of the conversation if the messages are scattered across your inbox. Conversation View keeps all emails related to a specific conversation together, making it much easier to follow the discussion and avoid missing important context or updates.
Saves time with search: If you need to find a specific message within a conversation, searching is a breeze. All related messages are grouped, so you only need to search for the conversation as a whole rather than hunting down individual emails.
Prevents duplicate emails: When an email thread gets long, it’s common to receive the same messages multiple times as new responses come in. Conversation View helps reduce the clutter by showing all the responses in a single thread, preventing unnecessary duplication in your inbox.
Streamlines email management: Organising your inbox is easier with Conversation View. You can quickly see all the interactions around a specific topic, making it simple to decide which messages need a response and which can be archived or deleted. This streamlined approach to email management leads to better productivity and less stress.
Customising Conversation View settings
Outlook offers a few customisation options for Conversation View to help you fine-tune how it works:
Sorting Conversations: You can choose how you want your conversations to be sorted. By default, they’re sorted by Date, but you can also sort by From, Subject, or Size if needed. To change this:
Click View Settings in the View tab.
Select Sort and choose your preferred sorting option.
Show or Hide Deleted Messages: If you want deleted messages to appear in the conversation, go to the View tab and select View Settings > Conversation Settings. From there, you can choose to show or hide deleted items in the conversation view.
Setting Folder-Specific Conversation Views: You can enable or disable Conversation View on a folder-by-folder basis, meaning you can choose which folders display conversations and which don’t. To do this, just follow the steps for enabling Conversation View on the specific folder you want to modify.
Mastering Conversation View in Outlook can drastically simplify your email management and make following email threads much easier. By consolidating related messages into one organized view, you can eliminate inbox clutter, save time, and stay on top of important conversations. Whether you’re working on a team project, tracking customer communications, or just trying to stay organized, Conversation View is the tool you need to keep everything in order.
Give it a try today and see how much more productive your email management becomes!