Outlook.com sent items show sender not recipient - how can I change the display setting

Hi Shonagh,

Yes - it seems we're having the same problem. I won't say that I've lost sleep over this, but I have tried EVERYTHING to get Microsoft's services to play ball with messages sent from other providers (e.g. Yahoo, GMail...).

The problem seems to be that any messages sent from a different account will always display your name, rather than those of your recipients. Still, I'm surprised if you've just "upgraded" from Hotmail to Outlook and experience the same problem!

With GMail, one way around this was to add your old accounts as email aliases, which would then resolve a similar problem of all your other sent messages showing as from "me" in your sent folder. Mercifully, the likes of GMX, Yahoo and AOL just work fine without having to find a workaround.

In my experience, Microsoft doesn't seem to realise how many people are impacted by this problem. In case it helps, the only thing that I can suggest as a (temporary!) solution is to use your account through Outlook 2007 or 2010, which will allow you to customise the display of the "sent" folder to show "to" rather than "from". It's hardly ideal (and makes no difference to the web interface), but maybe better than nothing while we wait for Microsoft to acknowledge and resolve the problem!

Cheers,

D.

Hi

The messages aren't imported (well, only from hotmail if that counts - it was a hotmail account, converted to outlook)

The messages are new messages I have sent recently - and as dwo.r mentioned below looks like he's having the same problem.

It's not that I can't sort the sent messages by 'to' it's that it simply does not display the 'to' name - it only shows my own name (the sender) and not the recipients name.

I did try and click on the sort by 'to' option in the right hand drop down as suggested - but unable to select it.

Kind rgds

Shonagh

Dear Kathleen,

Just following up my comment to Garry, thanks for this suggestion, but it does not always work with imported messages.

When I import sent messages from another provider, ALL of the messages show my name, not those of the recipients. Sorting by "to" therefore doesn't really help! Literally, every message that was not sent by my Outlook.com account will show my name in the "sent" folder, rather than the recipients' names! :)

I wish that Microsoft could resolve this problem with sent messages from other accounts (e.g. GMail, Yahoo). Otherwise, those of us who want to move to Microsoft will have to continue with other providers.

Cheers,

D.

Hi Garry,

For ages, I have been trying to resolve the same problem.

I am not sure if ShonaghWoods has imported messages from another account, but I really want to move from GMail to the new Outlook.com service.

The problem is that - no matter if I use IMAP to move messages, TrueSwitch or even Outlook / Hotmail's own POP protocol - messages sent from another account always show my name rather than the recipient's name for sent messages.

This is the ONLY reason why I cannot migrate all of my services (email, pictures, etc) over to Microsoft, since I need to be able to browse through my old emails sent to friends and collagues. At present, with any of Microsoft's email offerings (Hotmail, Live, Outlook...), my sent folder becomes a complete mess, with every message listed as "<my name>", rather than the names of the recipients.

For what it's worth, similar services (like AOL, Yahoo, GMX) can display messages sent from other accounts correctly. This must have something to do with how Microsoft deals with messages, but it's really frustrating.

Any advice would be great, and thanks for your help.

D.