Over the weekend my Outlook categories have disappeared from the Categories list. How do I get them back?

Anonymous
2024-06-17T15:12:36+00:00

We use categories to group emails coming into a Support mailbox. We set up lots of different categories for different people, teams etc. Each has a different colour assigned to it. When emails come in we will assign the appropriate category. Over the weekend, the categories appear to have been wiped from our categories list i.e. we now have only some predefined ones like Blue Category, Green Category etc. For emails previously categorised, I can still see what category I applied but the coloured 'sticker' is missing and I can no longer select those categories. In addition, if I set up a new category now, whilst I can apply a new category, it's not subsequently available for me to select in the category list, plus the coloured 'sticker' does not appear. Any thoughts on how we might resolve please? I'm using Outlook via Office 365.

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  1. Anonymous
    2025-04-16T14:51:59+00:00

    Hi....In short, nothing has been resolved.

    Microsoft are well aware of the problem, but have not provided a fix in over 12 months.

    I personally spent hours on the phone with their technical team last year, and at one point it looked like they found a fix, but at best it only restored about 50% of categories, and only for a small group of people.

    That was August 2024.

    Since then, nothing has happened.

    As of February, which was my last interaction with them, they are apparently pushing an update to outlook (web and app version) in June/July of this year. Apparently this will add a host of new features, including the ability to manage categories more efficiently.

    Whether this will fix the underlying issue remains to be seen.

    Until then, assume that categories is well and truly broken, and is virtually unuseable.

    Sorry.

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  2. Anonymous
    2025-04-15T16:40:41+00:00

    My categories seemed to have disappeared over the weekend. I last used them on Friday, April 11th and when I attempted to use them yesterday, Monday April 14th, they were all gone. What's even more bizarre is that the categories in my personal email box remain BUT the ones in a shared email box I have access to, have disappeared. The only remaining ones are the generic presets with basic red, blue, purple, etc. colors.

    It seems this has been an ongoing issue for over a year, what has been discovered? I didn't see a final resolution in any of these replies.

    I typically use Firefox and use MO365 on the web app, not the desktop app.

    THANKS!

    Amber

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  3. Anonymous
    2025-03-07T16:06:16+00:00

    thank you, but that I already knew and I had to rebuild all of them all over again when I made the horrible mistake of attempting to backup to the Microsoft Cloud. Now, I'm afraid that if i start using New Outlook, I will lose them again. Do you know what result will be because I want to get back the reminder buttons, etc.

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  4. Anonymous
    2025-03-06T11:05:36+00:00

    Hi,

    I had the same issue, and I'm embarrased to admit - but maybe it can help others:

    Categories in the inbox (folders) might be hidden for you under the inbox. You have to press the small arrow (>) to the left of inbox, and they might be there for you!

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  5. Anonymous
    2025-03-01T21:41:05+00:00

    I just had this happen to me and i almost had a heart attack. I am using the Desktop app. I clicked the box in the top right to revert back to the old out look, then switched it back to the new and every category came back!?

    To Dustin Cathey. What came back? I'm having this problem and I'm afraid to go to the new Outlook for fear I will lose even more after painstakingly recreating categories under each of my email accounts in Outlook. Can you please elaborate --- what you lost, how the new Outlook brought things back? I know new Outlook will restore all those reminder flags , etc. but what else does it do to change what's in your email boxes?

    Thanks

    DinaBiblin

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