Outlook should treat converstations (threads) as first-class entit

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

Outlook email management is centered around individual emails (the Arrange By
Conversation feature in Outlook 2003 is a good start). For example, Outlook
should support:

- automatically moving incoming replies to a conversation into the same
folder that contains earlier parts of the converstation. The user should not
have to redundantly categorize each and every part of a conversation. This
could be provided as a simple checkbox option that affects all incoming mail,
or as a new type of Outlook Rule action so that the user could apply it
selectively.

- searching for conversations that meet certain criteria. Search results
should return the entire converstation (arranged by conversation). For
example, if I want to identify or read whole conversation that mention a
specific keyword at least once in the thread, I currently have to search for
individual emails, and then search for the rest of the thread for each of the
emails in the results.

- categorization, annotation and other metadata association for
conversations as a whole.

GMail is an example of an email interface that gives first-class status to
conversations.
 
This is too funny.

As I was reading your suggestion, after the first paragraph, I was thinking,
"He needs to consider gmail." Then I got to the end and you mentioned it.

I just got my gmail account. I suspect I will still be an Outllook junkie
for a while for all of the other features it offers.
 
Actually, no, Search Folders doesn't address this problem because search
criteria acts on individual emails, not whole threads. Please my second
bullet again. Another example: I want a view (i.e. Search Folder) that will
show all threads with at least one unread email, not just the unread emails.

Thanks for your link to the suggestion site.

Roady said:
For a lot of this Outlook can already do this when you stop organizing mail
in normal folders and use Search Folders a lot more.

Anyway, wishes can be posted here;
http://register.microsoft.com/mswish/suggestion.asp

--
Robert Sparnaaij [MVP-Outlook]
www.howto-outlook.com

Tips of the month:
-What do the Outlook Icons Mean?
-Create an Office 2003 CD slipstreamed with Service Pack 1

-----
vas said:
Outlook email management is centered around individual emails (the Arrange
By
Conversation feature in Outlook 2003 is a good start). For example,
Outlook
should support:

- automatically moving incoming replies to a conversation into the same
folder that contains earlier parts of the converstation. The user should
not
have to redundantly categorize each and every part of a conversation. This
could be provided as a simple checkbox option that affects all incoming
mail,
or as a new type of Outlook Rule action so that the user could apply it
selectively.

- searching for conversations that meet certain criteria. Search results
should return the entire converstation (arranged by conversation). For
example, if I want to identify or read whole conversation that mention a
specific keyword at least once in the thread, I currently have to search
for
individual emails, and then search for the rest of the thread for each of
the
emails in the results.

- categorization, annotation and other metadata association for
conversations as a whole.

GMail is an example of an email interface that gives first-class status to
conversations.
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