Emails are out of order

Question

Emails are out of order

Rod Roderick 0

My newer account emails are so out of order. My settings were fine. My older account is in order. The upload screen shot of the settings show the newest and oldest are grayed out. I set this up with newest on top. I had two browsers open, one from my main account to have the exact settings with my new account. I checked my older account and the same boxes are grayed out. Again, still in order. In my mobile app, my inbox messages are in chronological order by date. I cannot fix this and all online suggestions did not work as my settings were correct.

0 comments

2 answers

Your answer

Answer 1

Richa Kale 0

Hi Rod,

I’d probably avoid changing the settings repeatedly, especially since you’ve already confirmed they’re correct. I’d test the same account in an incognito/private browser window or another browser, and also check whether the issue follows the account rather than the device.

Since the older account works with the same settings, that comparison is actually quite useful. It suggests that the configuration itself may not be the problem. If the behaviour is consistent across browsers but remains correct on mobile, I’d raise it as an account/webmail issue with the provider rather than continuing to troubleshoot the settings. Hope this helps you.

Rod Roderick 0 Reputation points

2026-09-25T01:34:33+00:00

It is set to date.
Rod Roderick 0 Reputation points

2026-09-25T01:36:33.9266667+00:00

I used incognito on Firefox and Duck Duck Go and had the same issues with the same settings with both accounts. It is a hotmail outlook bug perhaps? It is sorted by date.
Richa Kale 0 Reputation points

2026-09-25T01:55:40.7733333+00:00

Thanks for confirming that. Since the same behaviour occurs in private browsing across multiple browsers, it does seem unlikely to be caused by cached data, cookies, or a browser extension.

One distinction may be important: “Sort by Date” controls the order of conversations in the inbox, while “Newest on top” controls the order of individual messages inside a conversation thread. Microsoft documents these as separate settings. See the reference here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/mail/sort-email-messages-in-outlook

If the inbox itself is still out of chronological order after selecting Filter > Sort > Date, try temporarily turning Conversation view off. If the messages then appear correctly, the apparent ordering is likely related to conversation grouping rather than the date sort. Microsoft documentation also confirms that Outlook on the web can display messages either as conversations or individually.

Given that you have reproduced it in multiple browsers, I agree that it could be an Outlook.com web issue affecting the account. I cannot confirm that it is a known bug, but at this point I would report it through Outlook.com’s Help > Feedback option and include screenshots from both accounts. Hope this helps

Answer 2

If the inbox is receiving mail but the web view is showing messages out of order while mobile is chronological, the supported fix is to reset the message list sort to date.

In Outlook on the web, open the inbox.
Select Filter.
Select Sort.
Select Date.

If the newest messages still do not appear at the top, check whether the inbox is being sorted by sender instead of date. A similar case was resolved by changing the sort back to date, which restores newest-to-oldest ordering.

Also check whether the message list is simply appearing out of order rather than missing mail. Outlook.com guidance specifically says the message list can be restored to chronological order by selecting Filter > Sort > Date.

References: