Unified Inbox in Outlook 2020?

Anonymous
2020-09-07T20:00:01+00:00

I have been waiting 10 years for a unified inbox in outlook on windows.  I use outlook 5 hours a day with 10+ mailboxes (I am a consultant for several companies)

So about 5 years ago, I switched to mac, just because Apple outlook has unified inbox, sent mail etc.

Now My mac is getting too slow and too full (they come with small SSDs and no upgrade options). I don't want another mac, I want to buy a windows pc, but cant, as outlook on windows has no unified box.

In 10 years of office upgrades and new versions, they have not implemented a single useful new feature (for me as an IT professional anyway).  I would go so far as to say I would not notice the difference in functionality between office 2010 and the currently office 365.  In 10 years they could have added the one critical missing feature.  I can only assume that Microsoft do not add this feature to force people with many active mailboxes to buy Macs to run microsoft office.  Perhaps Apple pay the Microsoft Office team in brown envelopes to keep the windows version of outlook crippled?

I have tried all the unified inbox hacks.  None work properly.

If I was a microsoft developer, I would create an outlook plugin which implemented unified inbox and sent mail box and make a fortune.

Outlook | Windows | Classic Outlook for Windows | For home

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

47 answers

Sort by: Newest
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Deleted

    This answer has been deleted due to a violation of our Code of Conduct. The answer was manually reported or identified through automated detection before action was taken. Please refer to our Code of Conduct for more information.

    Comments have been turned off. Learn more

  2. Anonymous
    2021-03-05T14:17:26+00:00

    I thought I had a solution with a Custom Search Folder, but even though you can search All Mailboxes from the search bar, when I tried to create a Custom Search Folder using Advanced Search, it wouldn't allow searching multiple IMAP accounts. Back to square one.

    So I created a macro that performs the search instead and put it on the ribbon. Ugly but works.

    Sub Inbox()

    Dim myOlApp As New Outlook.Application

    txtSearch = "folder:Inbox"

    myOlApp.ActiveExplorer.Search txtSearch, olSearchScopeAllFolders

    SendKeys "{TAB}"

    Set myOlApp = Nothing

    End Sub

    Was this answer helpful?

    1 person found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2021-02-02T23:00:02+00:00

    Yes, although that's been my experience with unified inboxes generally, at least the way I've set them up before.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  4. Anonymous
    2021-02-02T22:47:08+00:00

    You must only be using POP3.  There is no ‘Change Folder’ option with IMAP accounts.

    Was this answer helpful?

    7 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  5. Anonymous
    2021-01-18T21:36:58+00:00

    An alternative to Thunderbird has been a recurring quest of mine for years, and I returned to it this evening.  The unified inbox thing has been a big hangup with Outlook, so I came across this thread.  After experimenting a bit, I seem to have found a satisfactory solution, but feel like I must be missing something, given the other comments and the fact that I didn't find this answer anywhere.

    If I go to Account Settings and click on the Email tab, I see a list of all the emails I've added to Outlook.  At the bottom is a "Change Folder" button that corresponds with each email address as I click on it.  From what I can tell, I can use this button to send the mail from all of my email addresses to a single inbox.  So, I pick my default Outlook address, which doesn't receive any mail, and all of the emails from all my addresses go to that inbox.

    Furthermore, it looks like as I go through those emails, if I hit reply, it automatically replies using the correct address.  

    So, basically, whatever email address I pick as the default, I just send all addresses to that inbox, and that becomes my unified inbox.

    Is there some reason this isn't a workable solution?

    I just re-read this.  It seems like maybe MS has sneaked this in.  It seems like you can pipe mail into any box you want then.  For me I use emclient and I like the all inboxes, sent, trash, unread as unified boxes.  I can easily hop between 3 accounts and have nothing routed.  I am using an O365 account, a Gmail account and a hotmail account without any issues.

    EMC just updated to release 8 and its gotten even better.  Further email is stored in a SQLlite DB and I can use the data from my client applications.  For instance I have a keyboard launcher that knows how to read my contacts table and I wrote an addin to search by name, then hit enter to dial, which launches the call on my Yealink IP desk phone.

    I wonder if its time for another match with outlook?

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments