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Microsoft Outlook lets you set rules to sort incoming mail into the appropriate folder. Sometimes I get an email that the rules do not or can not sort, so I put it in the appropriate folder manually.

The problem with this is that if someone replies to the conversation, I have to also move that reply into the same folder as the parent email in the chain.

How do I make Outlook sort an email reply into the same folder as the email it is replying to?

MackM
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  • What version of Outlook are you on? Windows or Mac? – Sun Jun 02 '16 at 21:16
  • @Sun Outlook 2010 on Windows 7 – MackM Jun 02 '16 at 21:52
  • Can you explain why it's important to have email replies to a thread be in the same folder? When you start using outlook 2013 or outlook 2016, the clean up folders feature is gonna blow your mind. – Sun Jun 03 '16 at 02:11
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    @Sun Say someone sends out an office wide email asking where the next office happy hour should be. My rules won't catch that email, so I need to manually file it under "Office Discussion". I want the 10+ replies recommending local bars to go into that folder instead of cluttering my Inbox. – MackM Jun 08 '16 at 21:25

2 Answers2

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This is for Outlook 2013:

  • Go to File > Options
  • Mail
  • Make sure the checkbox for "When reply to a message that is not in the Inbox, save the reply in the same folder' is on

File > Options

Sun
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    This option saves *my* reply in the same folder, instead of the 'sent messages' folder. I want to see other people's replies in the same folder. – MackM Jun 02 '16 at 21:50
  • conversation view finds the email in other folders https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Turn-on-or-off-Conversations-arrangement-in-the-message-list-96b6b5ea-def6-4a85-be5a-6fce272fe569 – Sun Jun 03 '16 at 02:09
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    I appreciate your help, Sun. Conversation view lets me see it in the destination folder, but it also puts it in the Inbox. I want it to go directly to the folder and skip the Inbox. – MackM Jun 08 '16 at 21:23
  • I'm afraid in Outlook 2010 there isn't a way through the application. Even in Outlook 2013, you have to use [Outlook VBA](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/jj973082.aspx) to get a handle on moving same conversations to a folder that is not the Inbox. You'd have to pay someone to write code that would do this for you. I feel what I gave you is free, good enough and works for me on a daily basis for my purposes. It is 2016, do we really need to hold to concepts such as folders? We have tags and search for a reason. – Sun Jun 08 '16 at 21:41
  • Is there a way to automatically tag incoming email with the same tag that a message from earlier in the conversation has? – MackM Jun 08 '16 at 21:54
  • Not really. You can set up a rule to tag a message based on the keywords in a subject, but you'd have to do that manually for each conversation. – Sun Jun 08 '16 at 21:55
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    Search in email clients is slow – interestedparty333 Oct 09 '17 at 22:12
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I had the same question, and I found exactly what I was looking for here:

Move incoming Outlook emails to folder containing previous conversation

There is a "move" ribbon/action in outlook, the last item of it is "Always move messages in this conversation...". There you can specify, where to move the messages that arrive for a specific conversation. Unfortunatly you will have to do this for every conversation (not for every mail though). So far the fastest solution i could find for this problem.

Sean M
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