Is there a way to have sent emails listed in Outlook go to the inbox
instead of (or besides) the Sent Items folder? An automatic BCC to
self or something? I like to see full email threads that include what
I send out as well as what I receive. All other email clients I know
about do this.
Create a subfolder under the 'Sent Items' folder called 'Received Items'
Create a rule (positioned at the end of the list) to save a copy of all
received e-mails to the 'Received Items' folder. Only those that make
it past junk filtering, blocked senders, or other anti-spam or
organizational rules will hit this rule (I'm assuming your other rules
include a stop-clause). If an e-mail makes it past the gauntlet of
rules, the last rule saves a copy into the 'Received Items' folder. If
you have any whitelist rules (with a stop-clause) then make sure they
save a copy to the 'Received Items' folder.
The result is that you have the following folder hierarchy:
:
|___ Sent Items
| |___ Received Items
:
You could then right-click on the 'Sent Items' folder to locate e-mails
that match your search criteria. Inclusion of subfolders is enabled by
default in the Advanced Find dialog, so searching on 'Sent Items' also
includes the 'Received Items' folder. You can then see all e-mails that
match your search criteria. You can even change the view in the find
dialog to group by conversation or other view options for however you
want to view them.
If you don't want that folder hierarchy then call the new folder 'All
mails' (instead of 'Received Items'). Then create the catch-all rule
mentioned above to move copies of all received e-mails into this folder.
Also add another rule at the end for when sending e-mails to put a copy
in the 'All mails' folder. Copies of all received and sent mails are
now saved in the 'All mails' folder (that got past your other rules).
You can change the view on the 'All mails' folder to group by
conversation and do whatever sorting you want.
I like the differentiation between the mails that I sent and those that
I received so I use the hierarchy mentioned above using the 'Received
Items' subfolder. If you want them all mixed together, you can create
the new 'All mails' folder or you could even reuse the 'Sent Items'
folder and make the catch-all received mails rule save copies of
received mails in that folder. It's up to how you want to organize
using rules.
