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

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  1. 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

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  3. Anonymous
    2021-04-18T14:12:45+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?

    For me this is not a workable solution. Although I do think it will be for most people. I have over 40 email addresses - most of which don't get a lot of traffic.

    I have used the technique in Thunderbird to create an account that highlights people who I don't want to miss.

    I'm like you. Every so often I look at Outlook with the view to moving from Thunderbird. But the lack of a unified inbox holds me back every time. Why is this a problem when your phone does it easily? Come on!

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  4. Anonymous
    2021-04-18T18:33:53+00:00

    I thought I'd mention Spark in this discussion. It does everything we've been asking for, multiple email addresses, unified inbox, fetches Gmail, Yahoo, IMAP, etc. The problem is that it's still just an app. Their website promises a Windows version is in development, but who knows? I use Outlook on my desktop, with the macro I outlined above, but Spark on my phone and tablet. It's honestly an incredible piece of software. I feel like an unpaid shill but hey: sparkmailapp.com

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  5. Anonymous
    2021-04-28T11:35:09+00:00

    MS supports response to me with the same issue was •   

     "the inboxes of IMAP and Exchange accounts cannot be unified.

    •    For POP accounts, the emails are downloaded to a PST file locally."

    whatever that means - so I'm still stuck checking 4 different emails multiple times a day

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