Forum Discussion
Outlook 365 "forced categories" in FROM field
Outlook 365 got new "feature" that marks random e-mail with "forced category" named "Promotion" (on screenshot "Propagacne akcie"). On attached screenshot you can see fairly important e-mail about delivery of big packet I'm waiting for. Definitely this is not related to any promotion or advertising.
This new "forced categories" do not exists in normal categories. They can not be deleted, changed, or hidden from view. Please note that what you normally understand as category is displayed in SUBJECT ("Predmet" on screenshot) field, but these "forced categories" are displayed in the FROM ("Od" on screenshot) field.
This feature was implemented cca 1 or 2 weeks ago.
Has anyone experienced situation like this? How to get rid of these "forced categories"?
What I tried:
1. Checked categories in settings - category like this does not exists
2. Checked categories in settings - suggested categories switch does not exists
3. Tried to create rule to remove the "forced category", but rules ignore these "forced categories", they work only with standard categories (in the subject field)
4. Searched view menu if it can be changed to not display "forced categories", but there is no single switch about it.
5. Tried all available conversation view options
6. Disabled copilot
8 Replies
This feature isn't categorizing correctly. That makes it a negative feature. I now need to be careful not to accidentally delete things that my autopilot mind wants to delete because it sees the "promotion" label. This is honestly the worst kind of fubar that a product team can make. It seeds active distrust in the user base. My recommendation would be to pull the plug on this feature post haste.
Unfortunately this hit me today and unfortunately the only MS remedy for this nonsense that I've found had been to add a mail-flow rule to set X-MS-Exchange-Organization-BulkStamping to zero.
If you cannot add the transport rule, you can create a Power Automate flow that will do the same - set X-MS-Exchange-Organization-BulkStamping SMTP header to 0.
I cannot imagine what value this setting could add. It really makes it difficult to see who the sender is on a small laptop screen as the email looks to come from "Promotion".
Someone at MS is trying to add value and it isn't working.
I also have the same issue. I run a small business and all of my quote requests are forced categorized as "promotions". I am in classic outlook, but would very much like to be able to remove this categorization. This is how my potential customers reach me, and should I loose access to these new incoming emails, I would have 0 business. This is very distressing!
I would recommend checking whether Focused Inbox or other automatic email classification features are enabled. Disabling Focused Inbox in Outlook Desktop or Outlook on the Web may help determine whether these labels are related to Microsoft's automatic message organization features.
I am using mu Outlook Portuguese Brazil Languange.
But In englishh the option are- Settings→ Email→ Layout or Message List
Settings → Mail → Layout → Focused Inbox (disable the option).
If you are using Outlook Desktop go to - View - Focused Inbox (disable the option)Thank you for this idea, have tested it and has no impact.
More precisely: In focused inbox the mentined e-mail is not visible at all. In normal inbox the e-mail is visible as on screenhot of my first post.
Edit: and when I was testing added one more test from my coleague "Add the sender to trusted senders" - unfortunatelly also without any change, still getting the "Promotios" displayed.
The screenshot shows “Promotion” inline before the sender, while the message has no matching item in your Categories list. That distinguishes it from Outlook’s user-managed color categories, which can be renamed or removed through Categorize. It appears to be a service-generated classification in the Outlook web interface, and Microsoft’s published category and view settings do not document a control for hiding that inline label. Rules, Sweep, or deleting a color category will not remove a presentation label. Compare the mailbox in classic Outlook; if the label is absent there, you have confirmed a web-client feature or rollout rather than mailbox data. Send the screenshot and one affected message’s headers through Help > Feedback, and ask your administrator to open a Microsoft 365 support case. Until Microsoft exposes a setting, classic Outlook or a different supported message-list view is the safest workaround; avoid modifying mail-flow rules merely to hide the display.
