Luckymonkey

The threaded view on GMail is just genuis. I don’t know how long exactly email has been around for, but it’s longer than I have - and only GMail seems to have gotten the interface right.

Not just the correct threading of emails, but threading the conversation - both the incoming and the outgoing emails all together. In one place.

So, since I’m forced to use Outlook at work, how can it be hacked about a bit to make it ‘work’ better for me?

This is based on the quick tip on Making Outlook thread like Gmail, from those clever people at Lifehacker. - but that is only half the story.

Firstly, you’ll need to make a new folder which contains both your incoming and outgoing emails. You can use search folders for that. Click on ‘File -> New -> Search folder’. Then scroll down to the bottom of the list and click on ‘custom’. Now give it a name, and choose both your inbox, and your sent items directories. Click Ok. Outlook will popup a warning that it’s going to select everything in those directories - that is fine.

Now you’ve got a single folder/view which contains all of your email. Now you just have to thread it. Following the tip from Lifehacker..

It s called Conversation, and it’s an optional column just like date received and subject. In your Inbox, go to the pane that lists your emails. Right-click any of the field headings, like From, or Subject, and select Field Chooser. You ll get a list of additional fields that pertain to your emails. Click and drag Conversation to the other field headings.

You then right click on the conversation field, select ‘group by’ and conversation, and shazzam, it should then show you the full threaded conversations, Outlook style.

It’s certainly not perfect (the interface is a bit more clunky than GMail), but if you have to use Outlook for work, I guess this is as good as it gets ?