Outlook email "groups" have suddenly disappeared; contacts still there but no groups.

Sorry, my reference should have been to my post for 18th April. The procedure there definitely works for Office 2016. As I haven't tested it for Office 2013, I can't say for sure what will happen in that version. I'll paste it again as follows:

Once you are on the NEW Outlook.com system (and it should happen in the very near future), [note that “Lists” replaces “Groups” as the terminology] you need to go into your Microsoft Office Outlook [I'm assuming Office 2016 or at least 2013], File>Account Settings>Account Settings and DELETE your outlook.com account, close Office Outlook, re-start it and File>Account Settings>Account Settings add your outlook.com as a new account. It will take a while to re-sync all your emails and contacts, but when you do, and you go in to People and change the View to List, slide across to find the Categories header and click on that, and lo and behold, your “Lists” appear asbold items, and clicking on them will reveal all the people you added to them.

Basically, without removing the account and re-attaching it to Office Outlook per above (including the re-starts), the "New Contact Group" (still in List view per today's posts) would not allow creation of a new group.

I will mention that there was a minor glitch during that process, which made it necessary for me to do a "repair" on Office 2016. I can't quite recall what the symptoms were, but after the repair, all was sweet, and has been ever since. Two ways to access the repair function. In older Control Panel view, Open "Programs and Features". Find the Office installation on the list of programs. Right-click on it and choose "Change". Repair should be an option. Or in Win10, Settings>System Display Notifications and Apps>Apps and Features>(find Office on the list and click on it>Modify>Modify (accept warning)... (repair will come up as the option) This happened to me, and possibly to one other user that I was helping. Anyway, it fixed it.

Without my spending any more time on this today, this page

http://www.howto-outlook.com/howto/outlookcommigrationinfo.htm

seems to suggest that Outlook.com will integrate properly into Outlook 2013 the same as Outlook 2016.

Well that worked well (not)

I now have 2 calenders

The one that is most useful, that I can use on my tablet, still doesn't allow the creation of groups, although it has decided to make its own groups based on companies

The 'this computer only' calendar allows groups but can only be used in my office

All contacts for 'my calendar' along with my original groups have disappeared

I know some people may think these are 'minor' glitches but I am trying to run a business and for me they are major f+#k ups, more time wasted. Gmail still working perfectly. Annoyed!!!!!

desredWP Not quite sure what you mean by calendar in this context. The main point of what I have been trying to support with is that people on the older version of outlook.com were losing their groups, but still had their contacts.

The steps that I went through in the last few posts only apply if your outlook.com account has already rolled over to  the new version which looks like this screenshot in the web based outlook.

  and in Office 2016 Outlook in List view, I see 

What I have done (and perhaps didn't mention in the posts) is unified my contacts, so that the only contact list I use is the one associated with my outlook.com email and Microsoft account. Sorry - left the images very small, especially to cut off people's names, but you can just see the bold group name with the "2 people" icon, which is a group created in Outlook People but could equally have been created in Office Outlook provided I was working within the contacts associated with my outlook.com email address.

Yes, it's easy to get muddled about all this, but believe me, once it is all sorted, it works particularly well.

Thank for the reply that is not my (InkMasters) message re calendar. However all my Hotmail accounts are now in the new version and I am about to start rebuilding the lists, and hope that they stay fixed this time. I think there is some problem with groups in the second account we operate for logistical reasons (ie others operating the account for local issues and people) but I am going back to bed now and will soldier on tomorrow (3.50 am here).

I have outlook.com (not preview) IMAP not POP still  having trouble getting groups to

'stick'.

I am outraged that this has happened, that MS have just thought so little of their customers that they would make such a huge change without the options of sticking with the old programme, and obviously without testing it properly. And that I am still spending so much time trying to get the thing to work.

I have exported all my contacts to gmail so that at least they are safe there, and will be transferring the account if things are not resolved soon.

To top if off I cannot access one of my accounts because of a security check which involves a code being sent to my mobile phone. I never put mob phone as recovery number because we have no cover here. Thanks again Microsoft for wasting a lot more of my time. 

Thanks ZigZag for your help even though not working for Microsoft - I will complain to outlook user voice