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Outlook: Turning your Focused Inbox on or off

Since August 2018 Microsoft Outlook has made the ‘Focused Inbox’ a default setting. This means that e-mails will be divided in two categories: ‘Priority’ and ‘Other’. Not everyone prefers this new setting, as it can cause e-mails to get overlooked.

This manual describes how you can reverse this setting and go back to the old division between ‘All’ and ‘Unread’ (or vice versa).

  • How does the Focused Inbox work?

    The Focused Inbox prioritizes your incoming e-mail automatically, it does this based on the subject matter (for example newsletters, automatically generated e-mails and the like) and on the amount of correspondence between you and the sender.

    This functionality is inherent to Microsoft Outlook: the University does not have any influence on this setting.

  • Step 1

    Start Outlook on a UU-computer or laptop.

  • Step 2

    • Select ‘View’ in the top menu
    • Press the button ‘Show Focused Inbox’ 

  • Step 3

     The setting has been changed (see example). You will see ‘All’ and ‘Unread’ as headings above the list of your e-mails.

    You can change this setting at any time.

  • If you are using the web version of Outlook, you can find this setting by going to ‘Settings’ in the top right corner and then turning on the ‘Focused inbox’ option.

Last modified: 6/11/2020

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