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
    2025-02-27T16:55:36+00:00

    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.

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  2. Anonymous
    2025-02-27T16:10:04+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!?

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-12-19T15:46:15+00:00

    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

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-12-18T17:36:06+00:00

    Hello - I've had a similar version of this problem, but only some categories disappeared. I was connected to the internet when I implemented them and now they disappeared and have been replaced with "Yellow Category/Purple Category" etc and have no emails saved under that category. How can I get this back please?

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-12-14T00:06:04+00:00

    Glad (?) to see that a lot of other people are seeing this also and I am not getting the "well, no one else has reported this ... " line.

    Funny thing is - it still works perfectly on my work laptop using enterprise M365 --> Outlook.

    It's only on my personal M365 Outlook that it is not working.

    Hmm, I wonder how it woudl go if I log into my personal Outlook on the work laptop.

    I haven't tried that; would be interesting just to see what happened and might help point to a cause, or just muddy the waters haha.

    (Also seems that the personal M365 Outlook desktop is a "light" version, but that could be my imagination; haven't really investigated as I usually use my GMAIL account directly, but Outlook has advantages in file management etc., well I thought it did. Gmail labels are a bit clunky so I thought I would use the Outlook client and have the advantage of categories. Ha.)

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