Outlook no longer grouping emails by conversation

Question

Recent upgrade to Microsoft365 and by extension Outlook365 (and the cloud) no longer grouping emails by conversations. All of the recommended settings to maintain emails by conversation have not been changed and they are all set instructed, but Outlook fails to group by conversation - which is especially necessary as emails are moved to folders other than the Inbox.
One recommendation I saw advised to Group by Date... this isn't a solution since conversation threads can span days - weeks even.

Another workaround I read as a recommendation was to Group by Flag... that would mean every single email in the conversation thread would need to be flagged and assigned a separate flag for each conversation. This is wholly unacceptable and more cumbersome than doing nothing.

The problem this failure to Group by Conversation presents is time spent searching for portions of a conversational thread that are in different folders (heaven help us if it is misfiled). The other part of this that has been lost was the notation visible on each email in the thread that identified which folder it was filed in.

The failure of Microsoft365 to retain this functionality is making managing email communication next to impossible - especially given the virtual office setting when more than 90% of corporate communication is transacted through emails.

PS... I was required to TAG this post. I have no idea which TAG applies so I just picked one. It's a Microsoft 365 / Outlook 365 issue, I think... there was NO TAG for EITHER

Answer 1

Hi @JM Warren ,

Do you mean that Outlook's Conversation View isn't working, right?

According to my search, Show as conversations is only available when you group by date. If it's grayed out, you need to switch to the Date grouping. When Show as conversations is enabled, the Date group is labeled Date (Conversations).

Based on my test on my Outlook, it works well, so what detailed version of Outlook are you using?(File > Office Account > About Outlook)

Please make sure you have upgraded it to the latest(File > Office Account > Update Options > Update Now)

Besides, when you upgrade from an old version of Outlook, Upgrade to Conversations is set automatically during the first run process after upgrading, check the UpgradeToConversations value under the Outlook key at
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Setup
DWORD: UpgradeToConversations
Data Value: 1

---

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".
Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

Answer 2

Not Working as i can see the grouped conversations threads but in some E mails i am not able to achieve this group E Mail threads.

Answer 3

For me, the solution was to check the box that is labeled "Show as Conversation."