How to add categories to favorites side bar on Outlook Desktop App

Dear AE_87,

Good day! Thank you for posting to Microsoft Community.

I do understand your query here but if you are using classic Outlook Desktop App, it does not have a direct option to add categories to the favorites sidebar like the web version. However, you can create a search folder for a specific category and add that search folder to your favorites. To do this, right-click on "Search Folders" in the folder pane, select "New Search Folder," and then choose "Categorized mail." Select the category you want and click "OK." You can then drag this search folder to your favorites or right click on the folder and select "Add to favorites". You can refer to the screenshot below:

1. create search folder

2. select categorize email

Once you created the search categorized email folder, right click on it and select Add to Favorites. Then check if there is any difference.

If your scenario is different from the above, In order to understand your query and provide possible solution, May I please double confirm if you're using Microsoft 365 business email accounts, Microsoft personal accounts (such as Outlook.com, hotmail.com, or live.com), or a third-party email provider account?

• May I please double confirm if you are using Exchange, IMAP or POP email account?
• Could you please provide us with the screenshot of your Outlook version details? see What version of Outlook do I have? - Microsoft Support

I look forward to your update. Please feel free to let me know how it goes or if I got you wrong. If you still have any concerns, please let me know so I can provide more suggestions.

Thank you for your precious time. Have a nice day.

Sincerely,

Libeamlak | Microsoft Community Moderator

Many thanks for your kind update.

I am glad that the provided workaround helped on the desktop version. However, search folder feature is available in Outlook desktop and web clients only, this feature doesn't seem feasible in the Outlook for Mobile at the moment. However, thank you for bringing this to our forum, your concern is very meaningful and reasonable. So, it is suggested to submit your valuable feedback directly to Microsoft product development team by either go to Help from your outlook for Mobile> submit Feedback or by posting on Ideas · Community (microsoft.com).

This is required because as we are from community team, we can only assist you to troubleshoot the query/share work around (if we have for any by design query) and providing you required information for feature’s availability status. This community team and Microsoft product development team are separate. So for feature’s suggestion or by design query, user need to submit feedback from their side to Microsoft product team. Once user send feedback via above mentioned way, it’s sent to Microsoft directly and it's routed to the relevant product teams who can review it. Hopefully your suggestion will help many users in the future.

In the meantime, please feel free to let me now if there are any questions and if incase my reply helps to clarify the issue, could you please help to vote or submit feedback on my above reply? it helps other user who are searching for the same information/workaround. Thanks for your support and understanding.

For other questions, feel free to add your post in the Microsoft Community team.

Thank you for your precious time. Have a nice day! 

Sincerely,

Libeamlak | Microsoft Community Moderator

Thanks a lot Libeamlak! This has helped on the desktop version but I somehow don't see these search folders on my mobile outlook.

How do I find and add the same search folders based on categories to favorites on the outlook mobile app?

Cheers!