Legacy Outlook for Mac - convos/replies now getting muddled up

Scam · 29 Apr 2025 at 10:58

Hi all. Before I have to go up to my company's IT desk, wondering if anyone can help. As of last week using Legacy Outlook for Mac on my work MBP - replies from different convos keep getting muddled into different threads. I've tried changing sorting from Conversations to Date Received, and back again etc. Generally fiddled about with settings, but to no avail.

It's doing my head in! Any ideas? Seems to be a sort-of common thing but no real answers online. I dont want to upgrade to the new Outlook as Notes aren't supported...

Thanks for any ideas.

visibleman · 29 Apr 2025 at 14:35

I can't say i've seen this exact issue myself but there was a recent fix for 'conversations' in Outlook Legacy within the 22/04/25 update, so it's worth making sure your up-to-date first (launch Microsoft AutoUpdater from within an Office app, Help > Check for Updates, or '/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/MAU2.0/Microsoft AutoUpdate.app'). MS Support Document on recent fix for 'conversations'.

Secondly you can try switching to New Outlook and letting it go through the motions of setting up your mailbox, then quit and reopen Outlook and switch back to Legacy - this can sometimes help with profile issues although your mileage may vary. The reverse of this, new to legacy and back, is pretty common for dealing with minor New Outlook issues.

Otherwise it's a backup and nuke of the Outlook profile, which is what i'd do as IT, but at this point and as an employee i would recommend getting a ticket in and letting your IT deal with it.

Edit - Forgot to add, you can also attempt to try and clear your mailbox cache - (IIRC) right-mouse-click your mailbox, select properties, make sure the general tab is open and then 'Empty Cache' - MS How-to.

Scam · 29 Apr 2025 at 15:18

Thanks @visibleman good tips. I did have 30mins spare so was trawling through it with my IT. He was going off to investigate, then typically as soon as I sat down and was Googling about Notes working (or not) on the new Outlook - I stumbled across this page describing the issue; https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb...accounts-910f6343-73b4-4d6f-ad20-74f293175ffe

My app will not update yet, and I just had my IT follow-up and tell me it's coming. But they also suggested I do upgrade as the legacy Outlook will be switched off in Oct '25

I can't find out if they have built-in Notes to it after all the complaints.. I'm guessing not. I have managed to sync my Exchange notes with the native Apple Notes app (err, I think it's the native Notes app, not the Sticky Notes app. That's a Mac thing right? Not built-in to legacy Outlook? :confused:

)

visibleman · 29 Apr 2025 at 17:30

'Notes' in New Outlook is supposedly planned and they have mentioned it in the past on some of their support docs (like here) but as of yet, nothing is on the official roadmap (Microsoft 365 Roadmap).
My corp. lot are mostly still pen and paper when it comes to notes/scribbles so it's not something i've really had to delve into much although we usually just push them to the default OWA (Outlook Web Access) or to use the MacOS Notes app with syncing enabled to their corp. iCloud accounts.
If you are syncing the MacOS Notes app to MS365/Exchange, then i would make sure you limit the sync to only Notes (or whatever you need).

Yup, the '16.96.25042021' update implemented the fix for an issue with 'conversations', along with other fixes as mentioned in the (Office for Mac) release notes - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/release-notes-office-for-mac.
I'm guessing your IT are doing some form of QA on the update but it may be worth asking to see if they would be happy to expedite it in your case as there's a good chance it would solve the issue.

Scam · 2 May 2025 at 10:33

Thanks again @visibleman. I took the plunge and updated to the new Outlook. It's not that bad but already coming up against this issue. Seems you can't search contacts for your own saved contacts? I'm trying to search for someone in my company who's contact I saved, noted what group/dept they are in.. yet it seems I cannot search via my vcard notes anymore. All I get is the one search bar which searches my companies entire GAL which is ludicrous!

As for Notes, I turned on sync for Exchange and am using Notes sync'ing that way. Although I figured out that doesn't support a lot of the wizzy features that you get when sync'ing via iCloud. So I'm tempted to switch to that. My iCloud is basically my work stuff (personal is Gmail, Keep etc.) so I don't see any downside in that.

But yeah, this contacts search thing... crazy.