What's going on with Outlook "Conversation" view?

Question

Perhaps there's some logic behind the Outlook "Conversation" view that I'm just not understanding, but it looks random to me. Can someone explain it?

The way I would expect this to work is that the most recent message should be displayed on top, then previous messages below, with indentation to show which messages are replies to which other message. In other words, the same way it's been done since the days of usenet and net news, for those of us old enough to remember that.

Instead, when you click the little triangle to expand a conversation, Outlook shows a subset of the messages in the conversation. I can't figure out the logic that determines which messages are shown and which are not - it seems random to me. You have to click the little triangle again to get it to fully expand. (I've missed important messages because of this!) Is there a reason for this? Or, even better, a way to turn it off? When I click to expand a conversation, just expand the whole darn thing!

Then, when you turn on the "classic indented view" it shows messages in a seemingly random order. Here's an example:

What on earth is the logic behind this? What is the order, and what is the significance of the italics? In this case, the most message is from Chris, at 11:10. The indentation should show me which message it was a reply to, but that does not seem to be working. In fact, the 11:10 message from Chris is a reply to the 11:09 message from Duncan, which is shown in italic at the bottom of the list. WTF?

Anyone care to explain? I think some software engineers were smoking crack when they coded this!

Answer 1

Hi @BunnyWabbit ,

Welcome to our forum!

Instead, when you click the little triangle to expand a conversation, Outlook shows a subset of the messages in the conversation. I can't figure out the logic that determines which messages are shown and which are not - it seems random to me.

Are you referring to how the conversation unfolds? If so, as i know, when you select "Always Expand Selected Conversation" option, the whole conversation will be shown when you click on any conversation. If you don't enable this option, you need to click the little triangle to expand a conversation.

In fact, the 11:10 message from Chris is a reply to the 11:09 message from Duncan, which is shown in italic at the bottom of the list. WTF?

Actually, emails shown in italic are in another folder instead of the current you are opening. It's suggested that you could reset view and enable conversation view to check if there're any differences.

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