To turn the feature off, you need to open your View menu as shown below. Here’s how to turn the Focused Inbox feature on or off on the desktop version of Outlook.

Turn ‘Focused Inbox’ feature off or on (desktop) The Focused Inbox may work for you, though personally I’ve always turned this feature off on both my phone and on the desktop version of Outlook. Also, if you have the feature turned on in one version of Outlook, say on your computer, but not on your phone, an email that shows up in the Inbox of one device may be ‘hidden’ on the other device because it has been filed into the Focused Inbox. It cannot read your mind so it sometimes puts emails you regard as important into the ‘Other’ box, and vice versa.

The problem is that the artificial intelligence doesn’t always get this sorting right.

Emails that are deemed more important by the AI show up in the Focused Inbox view, whilst those that are deemed less important go into the ‘Other’ Inbox view. This feature is available on both the desktop and mobile versions of Outlook. The idea of the Focused Inbox is that Outlook uses artificial intelligence (AI) to sort incoming emails and highlight those it believes will be more important to you. However this feature can be frustrating if you are not aware of it. Actually, the Focused Inbox is not really hiding the email from you but rather working as it should. I get cries of help along these lines all the time, and in most cases the culprit is Outlook’s Focused Inbox which is ‘hiding’ the ‘missing’ email.

You go back to your laptop and, sure enough, there it is. Only when you look for it on the phone … it’s nowhere to be seen. You know received an email on your laptop and made a mental note to deal with it on your phone a bit later. Have you ever seen an email on your mobile phone and decided to look at it on your PC when you get into the office, only to find that you can’t see the email in your Outlook Inbox? You check your phone again and there it is. Productivity Training for Executive Assistants & Directors.

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