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

I replied to this thread on June 26, 2024, to say I was having the same issue.

I just wanted to post an updated reply to see if maybe I could provide some insight into the issue with other things I've experienced, and to maybe offer some help for others in the same boat.

To start, I have been taking screenshots of my category list any time I make a change. This will be important in a moment.

Eventually I had given up with respect to this issue and decided to just work around it. In taking screenshots, I figured, I would just remake the categories and work from there. In my world, I use categories to sort current tasks, and once completed, the category is no longer important to me. So if completed items lost their category, it wasn't a big deal.

I did notice, however, that for items that had "lost" a category (and by this I mean the categories I had made that had disappeared), the item still retained something of a "ghost" of a category. It was basically just a blank/white category with the name of the old one, but it no longer existed in my category list. Here is what that looked like:

This is so common for my team that we just call them "ghost" categories colloquially... LOL

Here is what I noticed, based on the information above...

Because I was taking screenshots of my categories, and re-adding them in Outlook, I began to notice that the "ghost" categories began to regain their colour. And what's more, they were "shifted" over to the new categories that I re-made in Outlook! It's like the system picked up on the same colour and title and just... switched it back.

This isn't a fix to this problem, as I am in a position where losing my categories is just annoying rather than consequential to my work flow, as is the case for others.

I just wanted to provide my insight for those that may find it beneficial.

Cheers,

Christine

I've given up :(

I had one last call from Microsoft support today, we tried to fix the issue using specialist software from Github....no joy.

Apparently, Microsoft are pushing an update in June/July that will allow users to delete and amend existing categories.

Whether it will also make vanished categories re-appear is uncertain.

I'm adapting my workflow to cut all reliance on categories, and will check back in around July time to see if they found a fix, but by then I'm hoping I'll not have to use them again.

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!?

I think we have to accept that Microsoft lack either the ability, or the motivation, to fix this.

If we were a Boeing, Pepsi or Blackrock, I'm sure Microsoft would have been all over this, but we're a collection of small-to-medium enterprise users that MS really do not give a **** about.

I lost my categories six months ago.

Two years of meticulously categorising, across nearly 4,000 contacts, all gone.

I know for a fact that we lost a £17,000 sale in November because of this.

My guess is we've lost a lot more.

At the start of this year, and with a high level of begrudgery, I started to create a new set of categories, and have begun the slow, complex, painful and extremely time consuming process of recategorizing our address book data.

My biggest fear is that Microsoft either find a fix, revert back to the old categories and wipe out all of our efforts, or the same bug appears in the new categories and they also go missing.

Never before in 25 years of business have I felt so tied into such an awful supplier as Microsoft.

This has just happened to me as well!

I was showing a member of my team Outlook 365 Web Access. I had my Outlook client open at the time. Restarted my laptop and all of my Categories are gone!

This is not good - I have been using these for the last 5 years, all of that is now wiped out.

Bad, very bad!

Scott