Ignoring Conversation Feature in Microsoft Outlook

Introduction

Have you ever wanted to dismiss an email thread that you were on? Someone can unknowingly add you to a distribution list if you work for a big organization. Instead of deleting every email to ignore the noise, Outlook can help you ‘Ignore’ the entire conversation. Once you set up the ‘Ignore Conversation’ feature, every past and future conversation related to the selected thread will move to the Deleted Items folder. However, you can retrieve the thread only if it is still in the Deleted Items folder.

Procedure

Enabling Ignoring Conversation Feature

1. Open Outlook and select the Email chain you want to ignore.
2. In the "Home" tab, under the arrow of the "Delete" button, click on Ignore.
   • Or you can also right click on the email chain and click Ignore.

3. You will get a dialogue box confirming your intent to ignore your conversation.
   • Click on OK. All the past and future email chains will move to the deleted items folder.

Disabling Ignoring Conversation Feature

1. Select the Email chain from the "Deleted Items" folder.
   • Conversation must be in the "Deleted Items" folder for you to stop ignoring a conversation in Outlook.
2. In the "Home" tab, on left side of the "Delete" icon, click on Stop ignoring.

3. You will get a dialogue box confirming your intent to stop ignoring your conversation.
   • Click on OK. All the past and future email chains will move to your inbox from the deleted items folder.