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

Hi...has anyone on here had this problem fully resolved yet?

When this bug surfaced for us in July, we immediately contacted Microsoft support.

Last month (early September), around half of our categories re-appeared, and Microsoft closed our case.

However, the other half are still missing.

We re-opened a new support ticket, and were informed last night (31 September) that they had issued a software update, and the issue should be resolved.

Unfortunately, that's not the case. We're still missing most of our categories, in both the app and web version of Outlook.

Has anyone had a full resolution?

Does anyone have any updates on resolution?

It's been complicated even though we don't have the categories, it has a huge impact on everyday life.

Furthermore, my outlook calendar does not synchronize with the teams calendar and vice versa... I have meetings scheduled in both places and I have to manually reconcile them.

I have the latest versions

Thank you in advance

03 SEPTEMBER 2024 UPDATE

!! A large percentage of our categories have reappeared overnight !! :)

Not all of them are back...of the 371 categories we set up, around 145 have reappeared in the left column and are fully functional i.e. I can search for contacts through these reappeared categories.

Not sure when this change happened, but it's a welcome one, and a step in the right direction.

Whatever buttons Microsoft are pushing, I hope they keep doing it until all of our categories are back.

Hi Caitlin,

Yes, the bug seems to be affecting the web version (I use this) as well as the outlook app.

On my side, only ten categories are appearing. The other 370+ are missing. However, the data/categories aren't really gone. When I click on a contact, I can see all the categories associated with their record, which proves that the data has not been deleted...it's just not showing up on the left hand list.

The advice I've been given from Microsoft is "DO NOT DELETE OR MAKE ANY CHANGES TO YOUR CATEGORIES"

It won't help to delete and recreate them, because the bug is still there.

Microsoft have provided me with a workaround, but whether it's useful will depend on how many categories you have.

They are suggesting the following: "For now, would recommend to utilize the previous contacts feature using the folder's option as shown below, this is due to the uncertain ETA on resolution for the previous feature limitation occurring:"

In other words, roll back to the old version of Outlook (web or app) before categories were introduced, and use the folders feature to re-categorise your contacts.

It's a poor compromise, but that's all they can offer at this point.

Unfortunately, this is only worth doing if you only have a small number of categories that you can quickly recreate as folders.

In our case, with nearly 380 categories and 4,000 contacts, it will take weeks to do.

Thank you very much for the reply as well as the update you are posting.