What is Outlook Focused Inbox?
Are you overwhelmed by your email inbox? If so, the Focused Inbox feature in Microsoft Outlook could help. It automatically sorts incoming messages into two tabs: Focused and Other. Using artificial intelligence, the Focused tab displays the most important emails, such as those from frequent contacts or messages that are likely to be relevant to you, while the Other tab holds the rest, including newsletters, promotions, and emails that have been determined to be less critical to you. While it isn’t perfect, the Focused Inbox feature is surprisingly good at determining which items should go in Focused. It lets you prioritize and focus on the emails that matter most, so that you can reduce the time spent sifting through email clutter. See Outlook menu image below for how to turn it on/off.
The Focused Inbox engine learns from your email habits and interactions, continuously improving its sorting accuracy over time. This means that the more you use it, the better it gets at distinguishing between high-priority and low-priority emails. You can help the process by giving it instructions when you find a miscategorized email. Simply right click the message and choose “always move to focused/other” depending upon your choice. The good news is that if you try out Focused Inbox and you don’t like it, you simply turn it off and go back to the previous inbox type.
If you try Focused inbox and you don’t like it, you might try setting up Rules in Outlook to move messages to other folders based on certain criteria. To get to Rules setup from the Home tab in Outlook: Rules > Create Rule > Advanced Options. Then use the Rules Wizard to select the conditions and actions for your inbox rules. Be sure to test your rule to make sure it works the way you expect.
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