Outlook Conversation Tools

In order to take advantage of conversation tools, you must first change to Conversation view. This is done on the View tab, on the Messages group, by checking the Show as Conversations check box. Back in your Inbox, you’ll notice little white arrows next to some of your email messages. This indicates that it is a conversation. If you click on the arrow, it should expand to the rest of the messages in the conversation. If the arrow remains white, it means there are more messages, click it again.

Now, on the Home tab in the Delete group, you can click Clean Up and choose Clean Up Conversation. This will reduce the conversation to the number of emails that are required to keep the conversation whole, deleting any completely redundant messages. Those would be any that are completely included in another email. Anything that sets it apart (attachment, other replies deleted in the body), will cause it to be kept by itself. So, you won’t lose anything important. If you’re not interested in the conversation at all, you can choose Ignore, instead. In addition to moving all current email messages in the thread to Deleted items, it will continue to do that from now on.

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