Replied to messages are being moved from the Inbox to the Sent folder. No filter rules are set up.

Question

This is the request I received from one of our employees and this is baffling me ...

"Can I get someone to research an issue that we are having, in Outlook when a user replies to an email, the original email does not stay in the inbox. It gets moved to the sent items folder. What we want to happen is reply gets placed in sent items but the original email stays in the inbox. This is how Outlook normally works but is not for this user. Let me know if you find anything or have any questions."

I then posed back the following questions ...

 What version of Outlook on what OS?
 Are there any existing filter rules and have those been looked at?
 Is it a global issue in the client or only affecting this particular account?  Has anyone tried to create a new account to see if it happens there?

It is Office 365 and there are no existing filter rules. They did not attempt a 2nd account to see if it gets the same issue.

Any help will be appreciated!

Thanks,

James

Answer 1

Hi @Onsite ,

Welcome!

To confirm if this is a client issue, it is suggested to log into the web mail and check if the issue could be reproduced there as well. Or you could try adding the problematic email account to other normal devices and check if the issue would continue.

If the issue still continues on the web mail, the issue might be related to the problematic email account itself, please contact the administrator of this mailbox to check this specific email account.

If it could work fine on the web mail, then we could infer that the issue is more related to the Outlook desktop client. Please follow the suggestions below to troubleshoot:

1. There could be some add-ins in your Outlook client that cause this issue, so it is suggested to start your Outlook in safe mode (Press Win + R, type “outlook /safe”, press Enter.) and see if the issue continues.
2. To reset Outlook settings, we could try registry method to restore Outlook to its initial state. (Note: Serious problems can occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Before making changes, back up the registry to restore it in case something goes wrong.)
   Exit Outlook and open the Registry Editor
   Navigate to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0
   Right-click the Outlook folder
   Rename it as Outlook1
   Exit Registry Editor and restart Outlook to re-add your email account
   Notice: Back up your data before operations, if necessary.

Hope this can be helpful.

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Answer 2

@JeffYang-MSFT

I'm experiencing this issue right now with Outlook loaded in Edge, no browser extensions, no email filter rules, no outlook add-ins.

Answer 3

I have the same problem as the original poster. When I reply to messages it moves the whole conversation thread to my sent folder. How do i prevent this?

Answer 4

I am experiencing this problem as well. It has just started happening. Has no one received an answer to the question?