Forum Discussion
Groups emails are marked as read automatically when folder is deselected
Hello,
Can anyone explain me this Groups behavior in Outlook when you select Groups folder with new emails, don’t even read them and then select different folder and all emails in Groups are marked as read automatically, blue triangle after few moments disappear.
Users complain that they can’t remember which emails they already viewed in Groups. After selecting another folder even number of unread emails disappear next to folder.
What is motivation behind this functionality? It is very inconvenient for Groups to collaborate with emails they receive from external users.
Thanks.
This might explain the current situation:
Change to Outlook Groups Displays High Unread Counts
Outlook for Windows has supported Microsoft 365 Groups since 2015. The developers chose a seen/unseen model for Groups, but now Outlook has switched to a read/unread model, meaning that the unread counts for Groups can suddenly seem much higher than before. It’s a one-time change that aligns Outlook desktop with OWA and Outlook Mobile and there’s an easy way to set all unread items to be read. But you might want to tell people that this change is coming!
https://office365itpros.com/2020/09/24/change-outlook-groups-displays-high-unread-counts/
Yes ..... Unread messages can be marked or moved to a folder of their own or specified for unread mail.
نعم ..... الرسائل الغير مقرؤة يمكن تميزها او نقلها الى مجلد خاص بها او تحديد مجلد للبريد الغير مقرؤ
- Ravin Sachdeva
Microsoft
Hi,
You are correct in pointing out that the Groups conversations list/folder behaves differently than your inbox or other folders. This is what we call the Groups Seen/Unseen model as opposed to the inbox Read/Unread model.
When groups feature was added inside Outlook, we decided to have a more simple triage model for the groups conversations list, where all the conversations would be marked as seen as you moved away from the group. This was based on the feedback from many users who would follow/subscribe to the important groups in their inbox, and use the groups space just as an archive of conversations. The seen/unseen model thus helped in easy triage. Also, a user is not expected to read each conversation in a group since not all conversations may not be important for the user. As opposed to Inbox where all emails can be equally important and the user can be expected to read (peruse) through all.
Having said that, we have received recent feedback, like yours, that this model causes confusion and does not allow users to be fully productive in the group space/folder esp. for those users who do not want to follow/subscribe to a group in inbox. Hence, we are currently working towards building an Inbox like Read/Unread triage model inside the Groups as well! :) You should be able to see this feature light up sometime in 2018, since this requires deep infrastructural changes for Outlook. Please bear with us for a bit.
Thanks for your feedback!los comentarios y observaciones, me ayudaron mucho a comprender mas el tema muchas gracias.Ravin Sachdeva
Nice to hear this is coming, can't wait. It is already there for OWA though, unless I am mistaken, so any delivery date for Outlook?
- Ravin Sachdeva
Yes, Read/Unread for Groups is supported in OWA right now.
We will soon be bringing this to other Outlook apps as well, starting with Outlook Mobile (iOS and Android) and closely followed by Outlook on Windows. There is no specific ETA for this, but I would estimate that by the end of this calendar year, we should be able to finish deployment of this feature. We will send out an update when we're ready to start deploying.
Thanks for your patience.
Well there's no actual "read" status for those messages exposed, as in you cannot "mark them unread". Which I'm guessing is the reason why they are using a different method. But yeah, agreed, yet another unfortunate fact of life, when it comes to Groups implementation in Outlook...
