Focused and Other - Get Rid Of!
I want one inbox - I didn't ask for two. The other and focused options are so screwed up and annoying; I cannot even imagine why this was done. Most of the time I am getting focused emails in my other and other emails in my focused. How do your algorithms even sort or decide which is which? And why are you deciding? It is my inbox!

First off – I want to thank each and every one of your for trying the Outlook.com beta. Also for spending the time to offer and vote on all of the feedback.
I wanted to make sure that we let you all know that we did add some more controls around the Focused/Other inboxes. This includes allowing you to decide if you want it on or off.
We also fixed some bugs to make sure that it keeps your desired setting after you login/log out
To Control Focused Other Do the following:
1) Login to your account and make sure you are in the Beta
2) In the top right hand corner there is a little Gear Icon, click on it.
3) This opens the quick settings pane. From here you can disable Focused/Other, as well as other features like Conversation View, and the reading Pane.
Also, as you click on the settings in the Quick Settings you should see your screen update. This should help you ensure you are configuring your setup exactly the way you like.
Hope this helps, and thanks for all of the feedback!
David Los
327 comments
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Anonymous commented
get rid of "focus" and "other"
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Anonymous commented
I totally agree, emails that should be in the junk mail are getting sent to my focused email. I never signed up for the emails, I don't need match.com in my focused email, idk where they got my email from in the first place!
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Anonymous commented
Reduce the amount you're trying to do. It doesn't need to be technical at all. It's a bit of a joke with all these focused and other systems, not knowing where emails are going to go. There's absolutely nothing wrong with Outlook on my desktop, so there's no need to update the internet version to something that's completely unusable. Simple is better. If you want something that works, copy the Outlook you get on the desktop!
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Anonymous commented
I found the "focused" and "other" sorting options to be confusing and counter-intuitive. I'd rather see my messages in order, listed out in order, as they arrive to my inbox. As well, I found the right-most column to be too narrow to effectively display messages while reading or for composing new messages.
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Anonymous commented
I would like an option see "Focused" & "Other" an a single inbox - not switch between the two boxes. It makes it hard to read all the emails that I have. Also, have been missing important emails.
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Anonymous commented
Remove the focused and other type of inbox, it should be just one inbox
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Matt commented
This is really poor on a smart phone keeping it simple inan outlook style format is MUCH easier to read the bubble at the beginning of the text doesn't add anything in my mind to the user. I for one find it frustrating
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Anonymous commented
its up to me to decided what needs to be 'focused' 'other' not you. Its made me very angry as like i said i've missed important emails. or havent been able to find important things that i mivght not have had time to flag or folder initially when reading
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Ingi Freyr Ágústsson commented
Please take away the Focused - Other option in Inbox. When I open my inbox I want to see all the inbox mails there, not split into 2 folders.
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Anonymous commented
Too many "genuine" and important emails arriving in the other box - such as online confirmation emails, shopping receipts, insurance policies, quotes, application forms etc.
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Anonymous commented
My idea is for you to put Hotmail back the way it was. This version is awful.
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Hayden Darvin commented
I gave the Focused Inbox a try and its not my thing. I went to my settings to turn it off and it went away. However, my entire inbox seemed to disappear as well. The side bar said I had 11 new messages in my inbox, but nothing was displayed. I had to toggle the feature back on then off again just to ready my email. I have to do this each time I sign into my account on a web browser. I'd rather not check all my messages through the standard iPhone mail app, so I'm disabling the Beta on my web browser. :\ Kinda sucks.
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LesMac commented
get rid of the stupid new system
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Anonymous commented
I had to switch back because I couldn't find some of my unread emails in my Inbox. They simple weren't visible. I find it really distracting having my emails "sorted" into "Focused" and "Other" and now the new one groups them by months and days. Just put the email into the Inbox folder or the folders I have already set up to received particular emails and let me deal with them. Especially when a bunch of my emails, I have specifically stated are Not Spam, keep ending up in the Trash folder.
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Matthias Frei commented
I'd say kill the button. It's more confusing than helping in any way.
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Anonymous commented
New messages are not automatically appearing in my Inbox. The left hand pane says there is a new message, but I have to either refresh the whole page, toggle Focused/Other, or choose Unread in the drop down filter.
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Shawn McComb commented
Several....email from like 2015 for example do not like the split inbox focused and other because it has made me miss important email. I also dislike the fact you cant look at 50 email page and delete 50 at a time. I want the old style back regarding that. I dislike that I have been unable to search then delete several emails from the search. WHERE ARE ALL the missing emails?!!! please contact me with an answer! Also when I looked for terms of service on feed back page it came up blank
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chan commented
nothing wrong with the beta, just that the whole outlook is rather complicated and not user friendly, especially the focused inbox and other inbox, they are so confusing, and not friendly to email move to designate folder. it causing me overlooked some important message.
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Jenn ... commented
I like sorting my own e-mails. I dislike this feature. As long as the e-mails are easy to categorize (by sliding them to a folder), I would like to see my e-mails grouped in the same place.
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Anonymous commented
I don't like Outlook to decide which emails of mine that is qualified to be focused on and what belongs to "other". How do you know? And that's also kinda racist