Group emails in Outlook view

Outlook 365 2013 2010 2007 2003
By default, Outlook groups your emails by conversations. A conversation is a thread of messages with the same subject. However, if you need to find relevant notes somewhere in the last week's emails or an email from a particular person, navigating emails grouped by conversations takes a lot of time, and changing default grouping settings helps to locate the information much faster.

To group items in an existing view, use the following steps:

   1.   On the View tab, in the Current View group, click the View Settings button:

View Settings in Outlook 2016

   2.   In the Advanced View Settings dialog box, click the Group By... button:

Advanced View Settings in Outlook 2016

   3.   In the Group By dialog box:

Group By in Outlook 2016
  1. Uncheck the Automatically group according to arrangement checkbox, if you don't need to group by any field other than one of the predefined arrangements. By default, this checkbox is checked.
  2. Use the drop-down list under Group items by to select the first field to group your emails by. You can select up to four different grouping levels.
    The default field list is Frequently-used fields. You can change this by using the drop-down list marked Select available fields from. Choose the fieldset and the fields in that set will become available:
    Select Available Fields From in Outlook 2016
  3. Choose whether to sort your group headings in ascending or descending order.
  4. Choose whether you want your grouping field displayed in the view. Because the grouping field appears in the group header, you might want to save space and not show the field elsewhere in the view.
  5. Under the Expand/Collapse Defaults drop-down list, choose how you want your emails groups to be displayed. You can choose from All expanded, All collapsed, or As last viewed:
    Expand/Collapse Defaults in Outlook 2016
  6. Specify any additional grouping levels in the Group Items By boxes and click OK twice to apply your changes.

You can modify grouping levels directly in the Group By Header. This header isn't shown by default; however, you can expose the Group By header by right-clicking on one of the column headers in the view and choosing Group By This Field:

grouping popup menu in Outlook 2016

To sort your grouping levels, click on the button for the field you are grouping by. Your group headers will order groups in the inverse sort order. To stop clustering by a particular field, right-click the field in the Group By Header and select Don't Group By This Field. To group by an additional field, you can either open the Customize View dialog and select Group By..., or you can add other grouping levels directly from the view itself:

Grouping in Outlook 2016

See also this tip in French: Regrouper des éléments dans l'affichage.

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