Outlook search or list by category ( or no category )

Question

A few things about categories..

Finally, after years of waiting, i see the Outlook search bar finally has the option to search/list emails by CATEGORY. But have they made it useful enough for users who have extend list of categories and use these to manage them ?:

• Why are the categories not listed in alphabetical order ? Must also ask the question - what kind of weird, sorted list is this ? Does not make sense at all. See screenshot that displays just the first few characters of a small part of the list I have.
• I see the 'NONE' option in categories is available. Users have been waiting to list emails that have no category. This brought some hope when i saw this - but it does not work. The 'None' is used as a blank I guess.. why not just leave it as blank then ? Still waiting for the option to list emails with NO CATEGORY ( aka None ! )
• Also with Search folders, cannot add more than 10 categories. The alternate was to offer an option to create a search folder with categories that contain a word - but this is also not available.

Answer 1

Hi @Imustbehuman,

As a fellow Outlook user, I completely understand your frustration. Just to clarify, this is a community user-to-user forum, so I don't have any ability to directly change, improve, or influence Outlook's product design. However, I'd still like to share my perspective as another user.

I can confirm that the behaviors you've described match what I currently see in Outlook as well. In other words, this appears to be a limitation of Outlook's current design.

I also agree with several of your points:

• Having categories displayed in a more intuitive order would make them much easier to navigate, especially for users with a large number of categories.
• The "None" option can be confusing because it does not currently provide a straightforward way to list items that truly have no category assigned. In practice, selecting "None" appears to behave more like a default selection and does not seem to apply any noticeable filtering, which may leave users wondering about its intended purpose.
• The limitations around Search Folders and category-based filtering can be restrictive for users who rely heavily on categories to manage large mailboxes.

I would encourage you to submit feedback through Outlook · Community. This is the official channel for sharing suggestions directly with the Outlook product team, where feedback can be reviewed and considered for future improvements.

If you decide to submit a feedback post, please feel free to share the link here. I'd be more than happy to upvote it as a way of showing my support for your suggestion and helping increase its visibility.

Hopefully, Microsoft will consider improving these areas in a future update, as I can certainly see how they would benefit power users who rely heavily on categories and Search Folders.

Thank you again for taking the time to raise these thoughtful observations and suggestions.