Pinned and flagged emails

Question

Pinned and flagged emails

Valentina Fajardo 0

I have received thousands of emails that are pinned and flagged. My email has one or more pinned messages, causing slow syncing for this account. It says that I have to use another Outlook client to identify and unpin messages from these folders and then restart the app.

Hornblower409 15,140 Reputation points

2026-05-12T23:50:34.6+00:00

I'm not sure exactly what kind of problem you are trying to describe. Do you think you account has been hacked and the pinned and flagged emails are being generated by someone else?

How to recover a hacked or compromised Microsoft account
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/account-billing/how-to-recover-a-hacked-or-compromised-microsoft-account-24ca907d-bcdf-a44b-4656-47f0cd89c245

It says that I have to use another Outlook client to identify and unpin messages

Could you please post a screen shot of this message?

1 answer

Your answer

Hornblower409 15,140 Reputation points

2026-05-12T23:50:34.6+00:00

I'm not sure exactly what kind of problem you are trying to describe. Do you think you account has been hacked and the pinned and flagged emails are being generated by someone else?

How to recover a hacked or compromised Microsoft account
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/account-billing/how-to-recover-a-hacked-or-compromised-microsoft-account-24ca907d-bcdf-a44b-4656-47f0cd89c245

It says that I have to use another Outlook client to identify and unpin messages

Could you please post a screen shot of this message?

Answer 1

Pinned and flagged messages themselves do not need to be removed for Outlook.com to function, but if another Outlook client is warning that thousands of pinned/flagged items are slowing sync, use a full Outlook client (for example, new Outlook on Windows or classic Outlook) to bulk-manage them, then return to Outlook.com.

In Outlook.com (web), pinned and flagged messages are managed like this:

To see all flagged messages
- At the bottom left of Outlook.com, select the flagged-items icon to list all flagged messages.
To unflag messages in bulk
- In the message list, hover over each message and select the flag icon to unflag it.
- Repeat for as many as needed. (Bulk multi-select and unflag is supported in Outlook desktop clients, which is why the message suggests using “another Outlook client.”)
To unpin messages
- Ensure the inbox is sorted by date: select Filter at the top of the message list and choose a date-based sort if needed.
- In the message list, hover over a pinned message and select the pin icon to unpin it.
- Repeat for all pinned messages.

If the warning persists after unpinning/unflagging in another Outlook client, restart that client and Outlook.com, then allow some time for the mailbox to resync.

References:

Flag or pin a message in Outlook.com