How to Manage Email Overload with Focused Inbox in Outlook

Manage Email Overload with Focused Inbox in Outlook

Key Points:

• Regardless of how sophisticated your spam filter is, many unimportant messages can get into your inbox, making it difficult to parse your inbox at a glance.
• Microsoft apparently understands the problem of cluttered inboxes correctly and presents a Focused inbox that allows you to divide your inbox into two tabs — Focused and Other.
• The Focused tab allows you to prioritize high-priority emails and leave the rest under the Other tab.
• The Focused inbox helps you conquer your inbox once and for all — allowing you to focus only on important messages.
• Here’s how to utilize the Focus Assist feature on Outlook.

Regardless of how sophisticated your spam filter is, an unimportant message will hit your inbox. The less essential emails present the problem of sorting and prioritizing what’s essential in your inbox.

That’s why Microsoft Outlook introduced a feature that intelligently pre-sorts your email depending on what’s important. The feature divides your inbox into two tabs — Focused and Other.

The feature allows Microsoft to place your most important emails in Focused and the rest in Other. Microsoft AI considers emails and contacts you interact with as important and leaves the rest to others to create an organized inbox for you.

The feature is very easy to set up. However, it takes time to learn what’s important and what isn’t.

How to Set Up Focus Assist in Your Outlook App

1. Head over to the Outlook app
2. Find the View tab at the top of the screen
3. Click on Show Focused Inbox.

You’ll see a change in appearance in your inbox. Your mailbox will divide into the Focused and Other tabs. Outlook will inform you of email flowing to Focused and Others while allowing you to switch tabs anytime you want.

At first, Microsoft will take a guess to figure out important emails and put them inside of Focus, and send the remaining to Other. However, you can help Microsoft determine important messages and classify them under the Focus box or go to Other, which are less important.

Changing How Focus Assist Organizes Your Messages

Sometimes, Focus Assist will wrongly place an important message in the Other folder or a less prioritized email to Focus. You can help the outlook algorithm to organize your mailbox in two simple steps.

1. Select the Other tab and right-click on the email you want to move to the Focused inbox.
2. A drop-down menu will open. Scroll down to the bottom and click on the Move to Focus option if you only want to move a single message. To move all the future messages of the sender to the Focus folder, select Always Move to Focus.
3. If you’re moving an email from Focus to Others, right-click the message in the Focused tab and select Move to Other if you only want to move a single message. If you want the future messages from the sender to go to others, select Always Move to Others.

How to Turn On Focused Inbox on Outlook On the Web

Setting up Focused Inbox is slightly different when using Outlook on the web. However, here’s the step-by-step procedure:

1. Open Outlook on your web browser.
2. Select Setting at the top of the page.
3. Toggle on Focused Inbox.

Your mailbox on Outlook on the web will divide into the “Focused” and “Other” tabs — and Microsoft will inform you about email flowing to the Other tab.

Manually organizing the focused assist in Outlook on the web is similar to the Outlook app procedure.

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