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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.
Using New Outlook on Windows for personal email, calendar, and contact management
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We have also had the same thing happen to one of our employees. I can see the category when I click on the contact but the lists that were once listed under categories are no longer there. Out of 20 we have 5 left. This is not in a shared list but used by one of our estimators when sending out bids.
It's a total nightmare.
When categories launched, we went through an intensive, ten month project to categorise thousands of contacts by industry, level of seniority and job title.
I feel like a fool, because we soon came to rely so much on those categories to be able to reach out to suppliers and clients, and now that the data is no longer there, we're really struggling.
I've had a few emails from Microsoft support, and they tell me they've escalated this to a tech team, but I've not heard back. I guess we small businesses just don't mean enough to Microsoft to support us properly.
I thought I found a fix late lest week...if you click on a contact, you can see their categories on the contact card...if you make any amendment to their details (even just put a single letter in the notes section) and click save, their categories return to the left search column, and they work! You can click on them and any other contacts with the same category will appear.
Happy Days!!!!
And then it fell apart.
When you refresh the page or close the outlook app, the list defaults back to having 5-10 categories.
Also, even if you don't refresh and decide to try and keep the app (or tab, if you're using outlook web) open and keep the categories in the column, if you create a new contact, the full list of categories does not appear, so you still cannot categorise new contacts.
To re-iterate, Microsoft, this is a total nightmare. We need those categories to be able to do our jobs properly.
As much short term pain it would cause to switch to the Google business suite, for the first time in twenty years, I'm seriously looking into it.
I've been in daily contact with Microsoft about this. While they're being very helpful and understanding on the phone, it's yet to result in an actual solution.
This is the latest email they sent me this morning:
Our specialist team after checking it over and reproducing it, seems to be an issue with the feature itself at present.
Our Specialist team has been checking this out with engineering, and I will update you once I hear anything from them.
I had a user swap from original Outlook to New Outlook and 1/2 the categories are gone... flip back and they all return...
Are you using the Outlook app, or the web version?
We are using Outlook Web, and when we toggle off the new outlook, the category function vanishes entirely.
I tested it in the app version (which basically looks like a web wrapped app) and it does the same thing...toggle back to old outlook and the category feature disappears.
Could I ask what version of outlook you're running please?
Thanks
John