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How to Use the Focused Inbox in Outlook for Mac

To help you organize your incoming emails, Microsoft Outlook offers a feature called Focused Inbox. With it, Outlook pre-classifies messages as they arrive, prioritizing the most important ones.

The Focused Inbox feature works in conjunction with the Others Inbox, allowing you to view “other” non-essential messages. These are considered less important and may include emails that are sent in bulk (for example, email newsletters) or those that are automatically generated.

By using Outlook-centric Inbox on Mac, you can attend to the emails that matter most to you first before dealing with the unimportant ones in the Other Inbox. Also, you can help Outlook understand which emails are important or not by moving them to Focused or Other.

Let’s see how to use Priority Inbox in Outlook on Mac.

How to enable Focused Inbox in Outlook on Mac

You may not see Priority Inbox by default, but you can easily enable it.

To enable Priority Inbox in Outlook on Mac:

  1. Open Outlook and click Outlook> Preferences in the menu bar.
  2. Please select Reading in the Email section.
  3. Check the box next to Priority inbox that classifies its messages in Priority and Others.

You can then close the Preferences and you should see Outlook update immediately.

How to use the Priority Inbox and other inboxes in Outlook

With Priority Inbox turned on, you should now see your emails sorted by importance, or by what Outlook thinks is important. This is based on the emails and contacts you normally interact with.

To view your “Other” inbox, simply turn on the switch at the top of the message list. This way you can see the emails considered less important by the Outlook filter.

How to set a notification badge for priority emails

Once you’ve enabled Priority Inbox, you can set the Outlook notification badge in your Dock to show the unread count of messages specifically for that inbox. This allows you to see if and how many important emails are waiting.

  1. Open Outlook and click Outlook> Preferences in the menu bar.
  2. Please select Notifications and sounds in the Personal Settings section.
  3. Check the second option in Badge Count to include only Priority messages in the count.

Make sure you have Outlook notifications turned on on your Mac to see the badge count. Go to System Preferences> Notifications and select Microsoft Outlook to review or adjust settings.

How to help Outlook organize priority and other emails

You can give Outlook a boost to learn how to prioritize emails that are important or not important to you. This helps sort them into Priority and Other inboxes as they arrive.

If you are in the Priority Inbox and see a message that you want to move to Others, select the message and right-click or select Message in the menu bar.

Choose Move to Other to send the email to Another one time. Alternatively, select Always move to Other so that all future emails from that sender go to Other instead of Priority.

You can do the same if you see a message in Others that you want to be in the Priority Inbox: right-click the email or select Message in the menu bar.

Then select Move to Priority for a single movement or Always move to Priority to send future emails from the sender to Priorities.

Focus on important emails in Outlook on Mac

Outlook Priority Inbox gives you a quick and easy way to view your most important emails. You can then view the other messages you receive with a simple flip of a switch. Check the function in Outlook on your Mac and tell us what you think.

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