Use Focused Inbox in Microsoft Outlook for Windows and Mac


Focused Inbox separates your Outlook Inbox into two tabs—Focused and Other. Your most important emails appear on the Focused tab, while the rest remain on the Other tab. You'll be informed about email flowing to Other, and you can switch between tabs at any time.

Note: This feature applies to Outlook for Microsoft 365 and other recent versions of Outlook: 2019, 2016, and Outlook on the web.

How Focused Inbox Works

Focused Inbox works to prioritize what's most important. Focused Inbox is based on the content of the email (such as newsletters, machine-generated email, and so on) and who you interact with most often. If you need to fine-tune your Focused Inbox, other options such as Move to Focused and Move to Other are available. Read Microsoft's Focused Inbox for Outlook to see how to use the Focused Inbox.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Focused Inbox organize all the mail in my inbox as soon as I turn it on?

Yes. As soon as you enable Focused Inbox, you will see the Focused and Other tabs at the top of your Inbox. The more you use Focused Inbox, the smarter it gets about how it organizes your messages. You can also teach Outlook what matters most to you by moving emails between Focused and Other, and setting overrides to make sure emails from certain senders always show up in a particular destination.

I'm using Focused Inbox already on Outlook for iOS or Android. Does anything change for me?

Nothing will change in Outlook for iOS or Android. As Outlook desktop and web apps are updated to include Focused Inbox, the content of your Focused and Other tabs will be the same across all your Outlook clients.