How Can I Combine the ‘Focused’ and ‘Other’ Tabs into One Single Inbox in Outlook?

Is Outlook’s Focused Inbox Hiding Your Important Emails? Here’s How to Turn It Off.

You can turn off the Focused Inbox feature in Outlook to see all your emails in one single list. This change can be made in the settings on your desktop, web browser, or mobile app.

Your email inbox can feel like a busy mailroom. Letters, bills, and packages arrive all day long. Some are very important, while others are just junk mail. Outlook created the Focused Inbox to act like a helpful mail sorter. It tries to guess which emails are important and which ones can wait. It puts the important ones in a pile called ‘Focused’ and the rest in a pile called ‘Other’.

This sounds helpful, but sometimes the sorter makes mistakes. It might put an important bill in the ‘Other’ pile, where you might miss it. Many people prefer to sort their own mail. They want all their emails in one place so they can decide what is important. If you feel this way, you can easily tell Outlook to stop sorting your emails for you. This guide will show you how to do that, step by step, on any device you use.

Understanding Outlook’s Focused Inbox

The Focused Inbox is a tool built into Outlook that automatically sorts your incoming mail. It is designed to learn from your habits to get better over time. Think of it as a personal assistant who watches how you handle your mail.

Your inbox is split into two sections:

Focused

This tab is for emails that Outlook thinks you need to see right away. This includes messages from people you email often, like your boss, coworkers, or family. It also includes emails that look like personal conversations or urgent requests.

Other

This tab is for everything else. This is where you will usually find automated notifications, newsletters, promotional advertisements, and emails from companies you do not interact with regularly.

The system is not just looking at who sent the email. It pays attention to many small details. It considers if the email is part of an ongoing conversation, if you have replied to similar messages from that sender before, and the general content of the email. For example, an email from your child’s school will likely go to ‘Focused’, while a 50% off coupon from a store you visited once will go to ‘Other’.

It is important to know that no emails are ever deleted or lost because of this feature. Every single email sent to you is still in your inbox. They are just separated into two different views. You can click on the ‘Other’ tab at any time to see the emails that were sorted there.

Is the Focused Inbox a Good Fit for You?

While the goal is to help you manage email overload, this feature is not perfect for everyone. Your work style and the type of emails you receive will determine if it helps or hinders you.

When the Focused Inbox Helps

For some users, this automatic sorting is a valuable tool.

• You receive a very high volume of email. If you get hundreds of emails a day, having a pre-sorted list of priorities can save you a lot of time. You can quickly scan the ‘Focused’ tab for urgent matters and check the ‘Other’ tab later when you have more time.
• Most of your mail is promotional. If your inbox is constantly flooded with newsletters, ads, and social media notifications, the Focused Inbox does a good job of filtering out that noise so you can see conversations from real people.
• You prefer a quick glance at priorities. If you use your email for quick updates and are not a power user who relies on complex folder systems, the simple two-tab layout can be very effective.

When the Focused Inbox Creates Problems

For other users, the feature can cause frustration and lead to missed information.

• You miss important messages. The system is not perfect. Sometimes, a critical email, like a job interview confirmation, a shipping notification for an important package, or a bill due date reminder, can be mistakenly sent to the ‘Other’ tab. If you do not check that tab regularly, you could miss it entirely.
• You already have an organization system. Many people use their own methods to keep their inbox tidy. You might already use folders, color-coding, or specific rules to automatically sort your mail. The Focused Inbox can interfere with these systems and make it harder to find where your rules have placed an email.
• You find switching tabs inefficient. Some people simply prefer to see everything in one chronological list. It can feel faster to scroll through a single list than to constantly click back and forth between ‘Focused’ and ‘Other’ to make sure you have not missed anything.

If you find yourself in this second group, turning off the feature is the best solution.

How to Turn Off the Focused Inbox

The steps to turn off the Focused Inbox are slightly different depending on which version of Outlook you are using. Remember, this setting is specific to each email account. If you have multiple accounts set up in Outlook, you will need to repeat these steps for each one.

For the Classic Outlook Desktop App (Windows and Mac)

This applies to versions like Outlook 2016, 2019, 2021, and Microsoft 365 on a desktop computer.

1. Open your Outlook application.
2. Make sure you are viewing your Inbox for the account you want to change.
3. Look at the menu ribbon at the top of the screen. Click on the View tab.
4. In the View ribbon, you will see a button that says Show Focused Inbox. It may have a blue highlight if it is currently active.
5. Click the Show Focused Inbox button. This will turn the feature off. The ‘Focused‘ and ‘Other‘ tabs at the top of your email list will disappear, and all your emails will merge into a single list.

If you ever want to turn it back on, you can simply click this button again.

For the New Outlook and Outlook on the Web

This method works for the “New Outlook” for Windows and for anyone who accesses their email through a web browser like Chrome, Edge, or Safari.

1. Open the new Outlook app or navigate to Outlook.com in your browser and sign in.
2. Click on the Settings icon, which looks like a small gear. You can find it in the top-right corner of the page.
3. A settings panel will appear. At the top, select Mail, and then choose Layout.
4. Scroll down until you find the Focused Inbox section.
5. You will see an option that says “Sort my messages into Focused and Other“. Select the option below it that says Don’t sort my messages.
6. Click the Save button if one appears. The settings panel will close, and your inbox will immediately update to a single, combined view.

For the Outlook Mobile App (iOS and Android)

The process is the same whether you are using an iPhone, iPad, or Android device.

1. Open the Outlook app on your mobile device.
2. Tap your account profile picture or initial in the top-left corner of the screen.
3. A menu will slide out. At the bottom-left of this menu, tap the Settings icon, which looks like a gear.
4. In the Settings menu, scroll down to the “Email” section.
5. You will see a switch next to Focused Inbox. Tap this switch to toggle it off.
6. The change is instant. You can go back to your inbox, and you will see all your emails together in one list.

Can You Teach the Focused Inbox to Be Smarter?

If you like the idea of a sorted inbox but find that Outlook often makes mistakes, you can train it. By moving messages from one tab to the other, you teach the system about your priorities.

When you find an email in the wrong tab, you can correct it.

1. Go to the tab with the misplaced email (either ‘Focused’ or ‘Other’).
2. Right-click on the email message. On a mobile device, you would tap and hold the message to bring up a menu.
3. A menu will appear with several options. Look for the Move option.
4. If the email is in ‘Other‘ and you want it in ‘Focused‘, you will have two choices:
   • Move to Focused: This moves only this specific email.
   • Always Move to Focused: This moves the current email and tells Outlook that all future emails from this sender should always go to the ‘Focused’ tab.
5. If the email is in ‘Focused‘ and you want it in ‘Other‘, you will also have two choices:
   • Move to Other: This moves only this one email.
   • Always Move to Other: This moves the current email and tells Outlook to always place future messages from this sender in the ‘Other’ tab.

By consistently using the “Always Move” option for senders that are misplaced, the algorithm will slowly learn and become more accurate for you.

Life After the Focused Inbox: Other Ways to Organize

Once you turn off the Focused Inbox, you will have a single, unfiltered view of your mail. This is a great starting point for building your own organization system. Here are a few powerful Outlook features you can use:

• Rules: You can create rules to automatically manage incoming mail. For example, you can make a rule that sends all emails from a specific project or client directly into a folder you created.
• Color Categories: Assign colors to different types of emails. You could make all emails from your manager red, all emails related to a specific project blue, and all personal emails green. This makes it easy to spot important messages at a glance.
• Pinning: If you have a very important email you need to deal with later, you can “pin” it. This keeps the message at the very top of your inbox so it does not get buried under new mail.
• Flags and Tasks: You can flag an email for follow-up, which adds it to your To-Do list. This is an excellent way to turn an email into an actionable task without losing track of it.