Sorting Emails in The New Outlook

Anonymous
2023-10-04T23:39:12+00:00

Hello,

I went out of my way to come here and share this after having spent a couple of precious hours navigating the "New" Outlook.

This is the version it says under settings that I have:

You have Microsoft Outlook Version1.2023.927.100*(Production). Client Version is*20230929003.10 

Despite the neat and clean look and feel, I cannot wrap my head around something very basic that I (and I'm sure countless others) have become so accustomed to on the legacy Outlook, but let's call that the 'normal' Outlook, except that it simply vanished from the new edition.

I used to be able to sort emails by "From" and then start typing the name of the sender WITHOUT using the Search bar. This was a massive convenience as the way the results appear is different than how they appear when using the Search bar. Let's say I am searching for emails from 'Michael Lee' in this way. I will click Filter > Arrange By > From and immediately type the sender's name. Outlook would simply re-sort (not search) all the emails and the results will show emails from Michael Lee grouped under Michael Lee and sorted date-wise. If you got the spelling wrong, no biggie, simply collapse all the name groups so scrolling down is super quick. This was fantastic and something I thought would carry on to the New Outlook except that there is no such function there and this is bothering me to no end.

If this is the case, my question here is, why still have the Filter by Name function when a user can neither pull up the name they want nor collapse the name groups. Same for sorting by Subject. Once it is sorted by Subject, there is nothing one can do except to scroll down randomly.

As I manage the company's email accounts as an admin, I was on the phone with the MS365 representative and inquired whether the New Outlook I switched to is a fully launched product or still in beta, he confirmed it is fully operational and I am not using a sneak peek version of something under development. He also flatly suggested I can revert back to the normal Outlook. I know Microsoft is getting ready to remove Mail soon and one day down the line we all will be forced to use this New Outlook.

The annoying thing about the legacy Outlook is that the Red Flag button and the Delete Email icon are super close to each other. (see screenshot below)

Sorry to say this but apparently this is how it got approved by the Microsoft product leadership levels. That the distance between the email you want to trash and a super important one should be less than a cursor space. So that important email can be accidentally deleted! The New Outlook made a modest improvement in placement of the Flag and Trash bin icons (and increased distance between them to about two cursors lol) but then the sort feature is a major dealbreaker. My question is also, if ever there was any forum/platform Microsoft used to consult with users on how they use Outlook before deciding to do away with certain features that many consider to be in the DNA of Outlook?

Outlook | Windows | New Outlook for Windows | For home

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-10-23T16:28:36+00:00

    I agree with all the comments above, this is really frustrating, but in fact the most annoying part for me is that in "old outlook" if you selected an email & sorted by name you would stay on selected email & then have all other emails from that sender... but in "new outlook" the email selected is lost & you are taken to "a", with the only option to scroll down. Surely it is not hard to simply keep the email selected in new outlook? Please sort ASAP Microsoft.

    Exactly this

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-10-15T16:59:34+00:00

    Hi,

    I recently got the new Outlook and I've been similarly frustrated by the loss of the sort feature functionality that we were all used to. I just discovered an alternative to it that is not as good but certainly better than scrolling through thousands of emails for your sender or subject etc.

    In the Search bar at the top of the Outlook window, there is a Filter icon, which when selected, opens up a window for you to populate the From, To, CC, Subject, Keywords etc. that you'd want to find. Once an address for example is populated in the From field, click search. Note that the search will present all the emails from all folders received, sent or otherwise from that contact. To narrow the search results, change the "Search in" field by selecting the Outlook folder from the drop-down (Inbox, Drafts, Sent, Deleted etc.)

    It's not as quick and handy as what we were accustomed to, but I think it's way better than scrolling.

    Hope this helps!

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-07-03T22:07:03+00:00

    Totally agree. The New Outlook took away MANY of the UX neat functionalities that makes us efficient. The sorting is a pain in the neck and slow my productivity down A LOT. I am not able to group and filter the conversation so easily and that slows me down. I use the simply click and sort by From or Subject to group conversations probably a million times per day and now it's insane that I need to increase the # of steps and clicks to get where I want. Just painful.

    On top of that, the contrast is not there to guide the eyes. Pretty-ness is a NICE TO HAVE where as basic functionalities are MUST HAVES. The color code in pastel rainbows is NOT helpful at all when it comes to efficiency in the Calendar.

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-01-24T19:31:36+00:00

    I switched to the new Outlook again today after having given it a shot a few months back. It's still a non-starter for me because of this issue in particular. This isn't even a "nice to have" feature. This is a MAJOR loss in functionality and I agree with everyone else's sentiment.

    To top it off, the reason I switched to the new Outlook again today was to try out Copilot in Outlook with our shiny, new (expensive) licenses that were just purchased. Go figure Copilot is not available in the old (functional) desktop version of Outlook and they force you to switch to this garbage to use it. Guess I won't find out how it works from first-hand experience.

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-01-12T18:04:04+00:00

    I tried new Outlook previously and ran back to classic Outlook for this very reason. Now I have new MS Teams (forced) and I cant use classic Outlook because new Teams isn't available in the ribbon for adding a call to a meeting. So now I'm forced to use new Outlook and this is making me crazy that it sorts by sender or topic, but sends me to the top of my inbox and I have to scroll through my inbox and wont let me drag the label, with all of the emails I want to move, over to another folder. Don't the people who develop Outlook actually use it? Guess we'll have to wait for the PowerToys people to help us out. Until then I may as well start using web Outlook... ugh

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