Outlook 2010/2013 has a Conversation view which groups all related emails sharing the same subject together. Although this seemed like a great idea, there have been mixed response to this feature.
I personally did not like the conversation view as it was frustrating finding and responding to emails quickly.
But there are a lot of users who seem to like the Conversation view and I may have not given myself enough time to get used to it…
Here’s how you can turn on or off the Conversation view in Outlook (The instructions below are for Outlook 2013 unless specifically stated):
To Turn on Conversation View:
- Open Outlook
- Select the folder to which you want to apply the conversation view, for example your Inbox
- Click on the View Tab
- In the Messages ribbon group > tick the check box for Show as Conversations. The following message will be displayed:
- Click All mailboxes If you would like to apply the conversation view to all mailboxes or click This folder if you want to apply it to the current folder only.
This will now change your selected folder to conversation view with all related emails grouped together.
To Turn off Conversation View:
- Follow the exact steps above and untick the checkbox for Show as Conversations
- On the prompt that appears, select whether you want to remove the conversation view for the current folder or all mailboaxes.
This will now return your selected folder to normal view.
What are your thoughts about the Conversation view?
Let us know by leaving a comment below.
Hi! I’ve been reading your site for some time now and finally got the courage to go ahead and give you a shout out from Lubbock Tx! Just wanted to tell you keep up the great job!
I never want my emails to be shown as conversations. With Office 13, I have had to uncheck “Show as Conversations” after every time I have needed to do a clean shutdown and startup of my computer over the past approximately 3 months. This began after a Microsoft update, and it is very annoying.
What do I need to do to ensure that when I uncheck “Show as Conversations” it remains unchecked permanently?
Unfortunately there is nothing you can do to stop Microsoft from resetting the setting.
Now conversation view will not turn off. It makes outlook completely unusable in a work environment. The idiocy at Microsoft is mind-blowing.