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

I haven't seen or heard any fix since this opened in 2024. Has there been any update? I have a customer who has hundreds, maybe a thousand categories he uses for his business to keep track of paperwork but he keeps losing chunks of categories every few months or few times a year. He keeps recreating them but its hard to catch up ad find the missing ones.

He noticed it happens when a new devices logs in with the Outlook app like a new phone or adding it to a new Desktop PC version, but its been awhile since he added a device and it still happens randomly regardless. Hes been asking me for a few year for a fix but more of a nuisance and setback lately as it grows.

I realise I am late to the party but I have just realised that the categories option has disappeared from my desktop version of Outlook. I don't use categories at home that often so it may have disappeared a while back. I am using Microsoft Office Home and Business 2019. Interestingly, my work is using Microsoft Professional 2016 and it still has categories.

I can't re-create the categories. The function no longer exists. There is no button on the ribbon for categories.

Another interesting fact is that the categories function is still available with my hotmail email address, just not with my bigpond email address.

It would be nice if they could bring it back. 9 months seems a ridiculously long time for a fix.

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

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.

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!