Groups emails are marked as read automatically when folder is deselected

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!