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How to turn off Focused Inbox in Outlook
Focused Inbox splits your inbox into two tabs, Focused and Other, and decides for you which emails matter. If it keeps hiding things you wanted to see, you can switch it off and go back to a single inbox sorted by date. Nothing is deleted or moved — the two tabs merge into one list. This guide covers Outlook on the web and the new Outlook app, which share the same layout. Classic Outlook, Outlook for Mac and the mobile app are covered under Variations.
What you'll need: An outlook.com, hotmail.com or Microsoft 365 work or school account. A desktop or laptop browser, or the new Outlook app for Windows or Mac.
Open Outlook
Go to outlook.com (or outlook.office.com for a work or school account) and sign in, or open the new Outlook app. Make sure you're looking at Mail rather than Calendar — it's the envelope icon in the bar down the left-hand edge.
Open Settings
Click the gear icon near the top-right of the window. A Settings window opens over the top of your inbox.
Go to Mail, then Layout
In the left-hand column of the Settings window, click Mail. In the list that appears next to it, click Layout.
Choose not to sort your messages
Focused Inbox is the first section on the Layout page. It has two options. Select Don't sort my messages.
Save and close
Click Save at the bottom of the window, then close Settings with the X in the top-right corner. The Focused and Other tabs disappear, and everything that was in either one now sits in a single Inbox list, newest first.
Variations
Click the View tab in the ribbon, then click Show Focused Inbox to switch it off. The button is a toggle: highlighted means on. The Focused and Other tabs are replaced by All and Unread. Click the same button again to bring Focused Inbox back.
Click the View tab in the ribbon, then click Turn off Focused Inbox. The same command is also in the View menu in the menu bar at the top of the screen. On the older, legacy version of Outlook for Mac, the toggle is on the Organize tab instead and is labelled Focused Inbox.
Tap your profile picture or initials in the top-left corner, then tap the gear icon at the bottom of the panel to open Settings. Under Mail, tap Focused Inbox and turn the switch off. The change applies as soon as you go back to your inbox.
Troubleshooting
They haven't. Everything that was under Other is now mixed into the one inbox in date order, so an email you used to see at the top of Focused may now sit several screens down under newer messages from the Other tab. Use the search box at the top of the page to find a specific message, or sort by sender to regroup the list.
On a work or school account, your organisation's IT department can switch Focused Inbox off for everyone, in which case the setting disappears rather than showing as off. If your inbox has a Clutter folder in the folder list instead of Focused and Other tabs, your mailbox is using the older Clutter feature, which is controlled separately from the Clutter folder's own settings.
Focused Inbox is switched on and off per app. Turning it off in Outlook on the web or the new Outlook app doesn't change the Outlook app on your phone, or classic Outlook on another machine. Go through the matching Variation above on each device where you still see the two tabs.
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