SOLVED

When will Focus inbox support rollout for Imap Accounts?

Copper Contributor

Or is there any type of solution for this? Aside from me checking my emails solely on a mobile device.

8 Replies

I don't think it's planned at all for IMAP/POP accounts. @Tony Redmond might know more.

IMAP and POP are archaic protocols at this point. They don't support the protocol calls necessary for something like the Focused Inbox. 

Does that mean the only way to receive the focused inbox is to create a new email account?
best response confirmed by Tony Redmond (MVP)
Solution

No. Don't confuse a client access protocol (like POP3 or IMAP4) with what exists inside a mailbox. If you have an Exchange Online mailbox as part of your Office 365 subscription, the mailbox is available to many different clients using different protocols, including POP3, IMAP4, ActiveSync, MAPI, MAPI over HTTP, Exchange Web Services, and the Graph API. If you want to use the Focused Inbox feature, you need to access the mailbox with a client using a protocol that supports the feature. So, you need one of:

 

  • Outlook Web App (OWA)
  • Outlook desktop (click to run version) for Windows or Mac
  • Outlook for iOS or Android

If you want a mobile client, you are limited to running OWA in a browser on a mobile device or Outlook for iOS or Android.

 

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply to me. I have been searching around the internet for weeks trying to find a solution to this problem. Unfortunately, I am not much of a techy so a lot of that didn't make very much sense to me at all. Would it be possible for you to provide links or is there I could maybe get in touch with you directly to help me work through this?

Thanks a ton in advance!

I write extensively about this kind of stuff. Check me out on https://www.petri.com/office/office-365 or consider subscribing to the "live" Office 365 book at https://practical365.com/ebooks/office-365-for-it-pros/. We purposely created the book to bring together many different sources of information about Office 365 into a single place, and we update it weekly because that's how the cloud works...

Thanks. That solves the mystery of why it works on some devices and not others. The Windows 10 Mail client is evidently still awaiting an update that Outlook for Android already has. Unfortunately I prefer the built in mail client to Outlook.

Imap absolutely supports everything needed for focused inbox to work over. Just split the Inbox folder into two folders for Focused and Other.
1 best response

Accepted Solutions
best response confirmed by Tony Redmond (MVP)
Solution

No. Don't confuse a client access protocol (like POP3 or IMAP4) with what exists inside a mailbox. If you have an Exchange Online mailbox as part of your Office 365 subscription, the mailbox is available to many different clients using different protocols, including POP3, IMAP4, ActiveSync, MAPI, MAPI over HTTP, Exchange Web Services, and the Graph API. If you want to use the Focused Inbox feature, you need to access the mailbox with a client using a protocol that supports the feature. So, you need one of:

 

  • Outlook Web App (OWA)
  • Outlook desktop (click to run version) for Windows or Mac
  • Outlook for iOS or Android

If you want a mobile client, you are limited to running OWA in a browser on a mobile device or Outlook for iOS or Android.

 

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