SOLVED

Focused inbox shows in OWA missing in Outlook 2016

Brass Contributor

Ok - I tried to find a similar topic but I failed.  If this is a duplicate feel free to call me out. 

 

Yesterday (finally) focused inbox showed up in my tenant.  I have it disabled at the organization level but enabled for my mailbox.  OWA instantly updated (in the middle of a live demo) to show that I had the new focused inbox. 

 

The issue is that my Outlook 2016 client isn't seeing the view option to enable focused inbox.  I'm on version 1702 (build 7870.2038) - First release for Current Channel.  It updated yesterday morning and still nothing.  I've rebuilt the profile in 2016, gone online rather than cached, reset views, etc.  Nothing seems to be allowing me to turn it on within Outlook 2016. 

 

Has anybody ever seen this?  I'm not ready to turn it on for the organization so this is why I'm attempting to keep it local to me right now.

 

37 Replies
In file, office account, what build /version do you have? 1711 removes the modern auth requirement and focused will work for all office 365 and outlook.com users. 1711 is available to office insiders and will be released to general availability “soon”.

My tenant is not setup for Modern authentication yet, 2016 Pro Plus just updated to the December build (Monthly Channel 1711 8730.2122) and Focus inbox is now on for my test users.  Time to get Outlook trained to move everything to Other and keep my inbox clean!  :)

I got the newest version of Outlook 2016 but I still can't use the Focused Inbox feature. The Focused Inbox group is there in the View tab but the Show Focused Inbox button itself is missing... Any ideas on how to solve this?

 

focused-inbox.PNG

PowerShell verify Focused is on for your mailbox.

Get-FocusedInbox -Identity yoursmtpaddress

Should come back with FocusedInboxOn : True

 

This can be set tenant wide or per mailbox to test our the feature, and let the email admins get the correct transport rules in place.

Microsoft support fixed it for me. Thanks guys for all the help.

Thanks @Andrew Gitzen for the answer. I checked the state of the FocusedInboxOn parameter using the command you provided and the value is indeed "True". The Focused Inbox works on all my mobile devices but not in Outlook 2016...

 

The tenant wide settings did not contain any value, it was just blank. Should the Focused Inbox still work for my account?

When I run this it shows FocusedInboxOn :False. Yet, it is on in Mobile, webmail and outlook.

 

The crazy thing is, if i turn the view off in Outlook, my messages still disappear as if they're going to the 'unfocused' portion of the mailbox.

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/exchange/2016/10/14/managing-focused-inbox-in-office-365-and-out...

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4025253/description-of-the-focused-inbox-feature-in-office-...

Both of those websites tell about how Focused Inbox is being rolled out to tenants and what controls are in place.

Mobile versions of Outlook had Focused Inbox since my company started using it over a year ago.

If you were a Clutter user you might want to look at those articles closely, the fact Modern Authentication is being removed helped my test users.  Those test users are running the Monthly Channel build of Office 2016 and just updated to the December 6 build.

 

Just in case you need to reference build numbers.

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Version-and-build-numbers-of-update-channel-releases-ae9424...

I tagged another reply with some articles. Focused inbox can be off in the tenant and on for test users. I believe that only controls the feature rolling out to Desktop version of Outlook.
I posted a couple websites to look at in another reply.

Thank you for the information, @Andrew Gitzen! AS far as I'm concerned I should be able to use the Focused Inbox. I am on the Monthly Channel and have Build 8730.2127 of Office 2016 client installed...

I have a slightly different issue - I have 2 machines, both running Outlook 2016, both running 1708.
I have Focused inbox showing on one machine (and have done for months) - but for the same tenant account on the 2nd machine, it does not show up.

On the 2nd machine, I also have an account for a different tenant that does show Focused inbox.

For the main tenant, I also have Focused inbox on mobile working fine.

Anyone got any thoughts on why this one machine won't show Focused inbox for a mailbox that clearly has it enabled?

Hi, 

 

I had the same problem and had a CEO who was pretty angry about this. I finally managed to get support from Microsoft that sorted this out for me. This was the resolution (only on single user level): 

 

Well I can see that channel you are using is semi auto channel & latest channel has been updated now which is monthly channel.

So for this we need to switch semi auto channel into current channel.

I am sharing one link for you reference how to switch from deferred channel to current channel.

Here is the link-
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3185078/how-to-switch-from-deferred-channel-to-current-chan...

Once you visit the link, you need to follow some steps-
1. Download the suite from above link
2. Once it is downloaded, open Command Prompt as an administrator
3. Copy the script from above link & paste it in Command prompt
4. Once it is done restart the Outlook, you will be able to see focused inbox in outlook & channel will be switched to Monthly channel.

That didn't solve it for me. I'm was already on the Current Channel but tried the fix anyway, didn't have any effect...

 

 

Thanks - worked for me - it turned out the problem machine was on semi-annual (targeted) - it is now on Monthly, like the working machine, and I see Focused inbox on both.

@Mattias maybe try to reinstall the Office application and then run the fix? Maybe not a bad idea to start from scratch. 

I was setting up a new laptop and even though I had the Focused Inbox on my old one I couldn't get it to show up on my new one. I noticed my old one was on the Monthly channel and my new computer was not. Once I made the change and installed the latest round of updates I instantly had the Focused Inbox back. Yeah!!!

@Christopher Fritz Thanks for sharing this link. that worked for me after weeks of trying to get this to work on our terminal server. 

 

FYI: for me, all I had do was download the fix, I ran it and it downloaded some Office updates, I then opened Outlook  and the Focus feature was now available. 

 

Thank you

In my experience, it seemed like switching OWA between full and light affected whether the focused inbox would appear in my desktop app.