Outlook: Conversation Cleanup

What is a Conversation?

Conversations are also known as email threads. A conversation is the complete set of email messages from the first message through all responses (i.e. all the replies). The messages of a conversation have the same subject.

For example, a conversation results when you reply to someone’s e-mail (assuming the subject remains the same). In some instances, numerous replies are unavoidable and multiple people might reply to different messages in the conversation.

With conversation mode enabled, you will be able to group emails with the same subject line into one collapsible folder. This will enable you to search through emails in a thread regardless of when they were sent.

Here is how you enable Conversation View:

  1. Select View
  2. Place a check in the Show as Conversations box

Select View Show as Conversation

What does Conversation Clean Up do?

Conversation Clean Up looks through the contents of each message in the conversation. If a message is completely contained within one of the replies, the previous message is deleted. Conversation Clean Up is most useful on conversations with many responses back and forth especially with many recipients.

To run Conversation Clean Up,

  1. Select Home
  2. Click Clean Up. Select one of the options
    1. Clean Up Conversation - The current Conversation is reviewed, and redundant messages are deleted.
    2. Clean Up Folder - All Conversations in the selected folder are reviewed, and redundant messages are deleted.
    3. Clean Up Folder & Subfolders - All Conversations in the selected folder and any folder that it contains are reviewed, and redundant messages are deleted.

CleanUpOptions