Unified Inbox for Outlook

I'm not someone who normally complains, but...this very subject has been a festering sore spot for something close to a decade, and in my opinion, is a classic illustration of Microsoft's almost pathological tone-deafness when it comes to satisfying totally legitimate customer requirements. I've been a Windows and Office power user since the very first versions. As has been stated ad-nauseum, most Mac email client apps (including MS Outlook), as well as Thunderbird, and virtually all Android email clients have a unified inbox that works with IMAP accounts. There is clearly no technical reason whatsoever why the world's largest software company can't provide this badly needed, totally customary functionality. They just don't seem to give a flying ****. I have something like 20 IMAP accounts in Outlook (desktop), and to have to click on each Inbox to refresh and see new messages is just plain moronic, and pisses me off every time I have to do it. But once again, all of this has already been said a gazillion times in countless forums. It almost seems like they don't do it just to show us who's "boss". In response to these inquiries, these MS reps always bloviate the same old useless blather, but nothing ever meaningfully changes. My love/hate relationship with Microsoft products is such that I am finally seriously looking at ditching them completely (and jumping on the Mac bandwagon), even though it means throwing away roughly 40 years of advanced experience with the Windows platform and associated products. I'm tired of spending my hard-earned cash to support a company that so plainly doesn't care a whit about what I think.

Diane is there any way this issue can be escalated? i use outlook for mac currently and i want to migrate over to a surface pro and cannot due to this issue. i just dont understand how outlook for Mac has unified inbox but outlook for PC doesnt. its ridiculous ... Please help get the powers to be to update this issue.

Diane, thank you for taking the time to answer the question and offers solutions. I must say though that the solutions are archaic for 2022. I have been using Mozilla Thunderbird for many years now with the "unified inbox" feature which makes so much more sense.

I agree with @bmond123, this issues needs to be escalated at Microsoft.

I use MS365 Outlook on both Windows and macOS Monterey (v12.6) machines, with several IMAP accounts on different email hosts, including Exchange, Zoho, GMail, and my local ISP. On macOS, Outlook provides a unified inbox for all my IMAP accounts, on Windows 10 and 11 it doesn't.

Not sure why this should be so hard to implement on Windows as it already works on MacOS.

I'm not someone who normally complains, but...this very subject has been a festering sore spot for something close to a decade, and in my opinion, is a classic illustration of Microsoft's almost pathological tone-deafness when it comes to satisfying totally legitimate customer requirements. I've been a Windows and Office power user since the very first versions. As has been stated ad-nauseum, most Mac email client apps (including MS Outlook), as well as Thunderbird, and virtually all Android email clients have a unified inbox that works with IMAP accounts. There is clearly no technical reason whatsoever why the world's largest software company can't provide this badly needed, totally customary functionality. They just don't seem to give a flying ****. I have something like 20 IMAP accounts in Outlook (desktop), and to have to click on each Inbox to refresh and see new messages is just plain moronic, and pisses me off every time I have to do it. But once again, all of this has already been said a gazillion times in countless forums. It almost seems like they don't do it just to show us who's "boss". In response to these inquiries, these MS reps always bloviate the same old useless blather, but nothing ever meaningfully changes. My love/hate relationship with Microsoft products is such that I am finally seriously looking at ditching them completely (and jumping on the Mac bandwagon), even though it means throwing away roughly 40 years of advanced experience with the Windows platform and associated products. I'm tired of spending my hard-earned cash to support a company that so plainly doesn't care a whit about what I think.

You definitely nailed it. But the only way to put pressure is to stop using the products. There's no other way to put pressure. People need to make an effort to change to something else, that's only when they will be heard.