Outlook Classic missing groups folder/Tile

Question

I have several users that are missing the groups folder & groups tile. Not like they cant see groups due to cached exchange mode. They cannot see any groups. I have done the standard uninstall reinstall, new profile, .etc..... They can see the groups in OWA ( outlook.com) and can interact with it on there without issues. I have researched a bunch and have nothing about the actual groups folder being missing.

Answer 1

Hi @Alex McGregor

Since the groups are visible and fully accessible in Outlook on the web, and other users in your organization can see them in Classic Outlook, this doesn't appear to be an issue with the Microsoft 365 Groups themselves. 

To narrow down the cause, could you clarify a few points:  

Could you clarify whether the entire Groups section in the Outlook folder pane is missing for the affected users? 

What version and build of Classic Outlook are the affected users running? (File > Office Account > About Outlook). Are all affected users on the same Outlook build? 

If the steps suggested in Rayyan Fawad’s answer don’t resolve the issue, you may want to try creating a new Windows user profile and testing Outlook there. Since you’ve already recreated the Outlook profile and reinstalled Outlook, this will help determine whether the issue is tied to the Windows profile rather than Outlook itself.  

If the issue persists even after those troubleshooting steps, and the Groups remain accessible in Outlook on the web, it may be worth opening a support ticket through the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. Microsoft support can check tenant-level settings and run backend diagnostics that aren’t available in this forum.  

For further instructions, you can follow this guide: Get support - Microsoft 365 admin | Microsoft Learn 

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Answer 2

Hey Alex, dealing with a ghosting Groups folder is a massive headache, especially when you've already burned time on the usual reinstall and profile dance. Since OWA is working perfectly, Outlook Classic is definitely hitting a local roadblock. Drop into the registry on one of the broken machines and check HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Options\General for a pesky DWORD named DisableMicrosoft365Groups—if it got flipped to 1, that explains the total lockdown. If the registry looks clean, it's usually just a stubborn local cache glitch refusing to pull the configuration from Exchange. Crack open the Run dialog (Win + R), fire up outlook.exe /resetnavpane, and see if that forces the missing tile to stop hiding.