Your potential Start Page
Yet, another brainchild from Microsoft. But heyy.. this looks quite interesting.
August 2, 2005
Gmail-like Conversation View in Outlook 2003
Well, it’s not perfect, but it may be useful to some.
- Create a new search folder and name it All Mail.
Don’t specify any criteria, and select the folders you want (should be only inbox and sent items folders. You may also want to uncheck the “include subfolders“ option.) - Go to All Mail and wait for it to finish searching (it may take a while, but it’s a one-time thing.)
- Click the Arrange By column and select Conversation.
Gmail does this better, as conversations are grouped even when the subject changes, and it only groups a conversation from one person, whereas Outlook may include a mixture in a single group.
Outlook 2003 has a similar conversation view that can be either collapsed to a topic or expanded to show the mails in the thread (and potentially auto-preview the contents as well). As far as I can see, the primary difference between Gmail and Outlook’s conversation views is that Outlook’s is folder-specific. When viewing your Inbox in conversation view, this means that your responses don’t appear in the thread because they’re filed in the Sent-Items folder. For Outlook users who want a more accurate conversation view, a Search Folder over the Inbox and Sent-Items folders set to the conversation view should do the trick. If you find yourself using this as much as I do, then you’ll want to add the Search Folder to your list of Favorite Folders to make it easier to access.