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I file email conversations in various folders. But every new email in that conversation goes to inbox, so I have to manually move it to the folder that contains the rest of the conversation. Is there a way for Outlook to do this automatically with all new emails?

What I want: Outlook will do the following automatically as long as it's running:

  • For all unread emails in inbox...
  • ...if email is not the first in the conversation, search for folders where that conversation is stored.
  • If found, move the new unread email to the first* folder it finds (except for Inbox, Trash, or Sent).
  • Optionally: If there is more than one folder containing messages in the same conversation, then do nothing.

**If there is more than one folder containing messages in the same conversation, then do nothing*. (This extra rule is not necessary if it complicates the solution too much)

Thanks!

SAL
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  • I mistakenly asked this here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/32311382/move-new-outlook-emails-to-folder-containing-conversation-thread/ – SAL Oct 14 '15 at 19:55
  • Great feature request for email clients or a plugin. As a gmail user, this is very frustrating. "All" the client/plugin may need to maintain is a map of thread-id to folder. – interestedparty333 Oct 09 '17 at 22:07

2 Answers2

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You can solve this issue using a VBA macro that generates a list of folders that all of the emails in the conversation currently reside in. Then, the user can pick from this list or a rule can be set to select the folder to move the email to. The selection or rule should trigger another VBA subroutine to move the emails.

I had the same issue and created a macro to just this. The macro is currently working in Outlook 2016.

GitHub: outlook-move-to-thread

Kyle
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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.

cheers

selegiochi
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  • Useful! (Don't have the rep to mark it as such) But not sure if that's what I'm looking for. Will try it though. Interestingly, the behavior I'm looking for seems to be somebody else's problem in this post: https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/825348-problem-with-probably-the-always-move-conversation-option-in-outlook-2010-13 If only I could avoid the issues Goblinski described on 17 March... – SAL Oct 27 '15 at 15:34