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

[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.

 

[Roady [MVP]]

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

 

[Guest]

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.

 

[Guest]

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.

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

-----

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.