Can I have one inbox for multiple accounts in Outlook?

If your email program is running slow or getting a little out of control, it might be time to merge some things up. Inbox overload can cause problems with how quickly your computer processes messages (and thus slows down) as well as causing confusion when trying to find what you're looking for. You may also want to consolidate accounts so that everything doesn't show up under different tabs or labels. And sometimes we just don't need the extra features offered by our mail programs!

To help solve these issues, here's an overview on how to clean up your Outlook files, accounts, and folders. We'll cover both Windows 7/8 Mail and Office 365, but most tips apply across platforms.

Note: If you use Gmail instead of Microsoft Exchange Server, there are still ways to tidy up your account using third-party tools like Gmelius. The process isn't quite as streamlined, however. Also note that if you decide not to continue reading at any point, deleting your data from services like Hotmail / Live does NOT mean they disappear forever. They could potentially resurface later, especially online. That said, let us know about any such experiences you've had below!

How do I change my Outlook settings to view all emails?

This should go without saying, but before diving into cleaning up your various accounts and folders, ensure that "all" mails are being displayed in Outlook itself. This means checking all views - Quick Links & All Folders, Viewing Options " General Settings " Display options, etc. It would be very annoying to try to sort through dozens of unread messages only to discover that none were visible because they weren't set correctly in Outlook.  You can also check whether this has been done already by opening Tools & Account Settings & Mail Setup. In particular, look at Set Default Email Formatting, which provides instructions on changing general formatting rules like display names, signature lines, and more.

How do I make all my emails appear in one inbox in Outlook 2013?

There are several solutions for consolidating emails in Outlook 2013. Here are three that work best in combination for me.

1. Merge Accounts

First off, you can actually simply combine certain accounts together to achieve similar effects. For example, combining separate Google Calendar events between a personal Google calendar and a shared business calendar can save space in Outlook while keeping everything organized under one tab. Similarly, you can group contacts from multiple sources and then filter them into their own section if needed.

The downside to doing this is that other people who send you attachments via those accounts won't necessarily see them end up in one place. However, you can add additional filters to further organize things.

2. Use Filters

Another way to keep track of everything is to create filters based upon criteria like sender name, subject line, keywords, file type, date range, etc. These filters allow you to easily sort through large quantities of incoming mail much faster than sorting manually. Once created, you can even pin specific items to the Navigation Bar for quick access.

3. Create Labels

Labels are another great way to keep track of messages in Outlook. Instead of grouping everything together, though, you can label individual messages according to categories or topics. Each message can then be opened within its respective container directly rather than having to open every single mailbox separately. Creating new labels can be accomplished via File & New Label... Alternatively, right click on a message and select Move Message.... Then choose Home | More Rules | New Rule.... From there, enter whatever conditions you'd like, e.g., [Subject] contains [search term], move the message accordingly, and hit OK.

Once you've created enough rules, your entire inbox should automatically be labeled according to each rule's results. Within each labeled folder, you can drill deeper by creating subfolders.

4. Unsubscribe from Extra Sources

It's possible to unsubscribe from mailing lists without removing the actual messages themselves. With that said, you probably shouldn't leave junk mail lying around either -- after all, why clutter up your inbox? Thus, consider setting up filtering to ignore certain types or domains entirely.

For instance, say you wanted to stop receiving newsletters from Dell Inc. By choosing Home | Filter Messages.... On the next screen, scroll down until you spot the option titled Ignore Sender... Click Add Criteria and input dellnewsletter into the box. Hit Apply and you should never receive anything from Dell again unless you specifically opt in yourself. Repeat this step for each unwanted source.

5. Delete Emails Outside Your Control

One final tip involves disposing of old emails that aren't important anymore. One common problem I often encounter is dealing with spammy sales letters sent years ago promising free shipping or subscriptions to premium content that no longer exist. Fortunately, there's an easy solution for this: delete older emails outside your control.

Using the same method outlined above, create a filter that ignores certain subjects or words. Enter something along the lines of "[subject]" OR "free shipping". When it comes to emails that contain the word "unlimited", copy the text into Notepad or Word first. Next, head over to search engines like Bing, Google, Yahoo!, DuckDuckGo, etc. and paste the text into their search bar. Many sites will list unlimited deals dating back months or years.

6. Clean Up Old Attachments

Finally, it's worth mentioning that although it sounds obvious, it's important to regularly remove old attachments from archives. Even if you mark them as read, they take up precious hard drive storage space. Plus, they can become corrupted and unusable eventually.

7. Keep Important Files Organized

Lastly, avoid cluttering up your main folders with unnecessary stuff. While organizing your documents may seem overwhelming at times, thankfully it gets easier once you learn where to store specific types of information.

When it comes to photos, stick to a few simple principles. First, keep pictures uploaded to Facebook separate from ones uploaded elsewhere. Second, put family photos away somewhere safe like photo albums. Third, if you must upload images to cloud service like Dropbox, remember to always download them to your PC before saving anywhere else. Finally, if you need to share a lot of high resolution image files, consider downsizing them first.

As far as videos, stick to two basic guidelines: 1.) Never store video clips on external drives (e.g., USB), and 2.) Always compress your footage before uploading it to social media networks. Otherwise, you risk damaging critical system components.

With regards to music, follow the same advice provided for photos. Don't bother storing songs onto CDs. Instead, purchase MP3 downloads and convert them to WMA format.

If you haven't heard, you can now sync your Kindle books to your smartphone for offline viewing.

What other methods do you recommend for tidying up your inbox? How did you deal with difficult situations? Let us know in the comments!

Outlook is a powerful tool that's packed with features -- but it can also be annoying when your computer slows down or gets cluttered. The problem is especially apparent when you need to use more than one email address at the same time.

For example, maybe you're using two different Gmail addresses (or Yahoo! Mail) so you want them both listed under "Mail" in Windows 10's taskbar icon menu. Or perhaps you've set up an iCloud mail account and would like all of those messages synced over from Apple's servers into a single folder. In some cases, Outlook might even require additional software to work correctly.

The solution to these problems is to merge folders. This allows you to keep track of multiple accounts within one main inbox while maintaining separate views inside Outlook. It makes sense once you see how easy it is to create new folders in Outlook. We'll explain exactly what happens during each step below.

First things first: Let's look at the best ways to open another mailbox/account in Outlook 2016.

How do I have multiple accounts on one inbox?

If you already have other Microsoft Office applications installed -- such as Word, Excel, Access, etc. -- then adding a second mailbox should only take about five minutes. You don't actually need to install any extra programs. Just follow our guide here to add a second mailbox.

If you haven't got those apps yet, however, you won't find yourself short of options when choosing which program to download. A number of popular office suites are available, including Google Docs, LibreOffice, Zoho, Basecamp, Asana, Confluence, Jira Cloud, Slack, and others.

It doesn't matter whether you choose something natively built-in to your operating system, or a third party app. Once downloaded, just sign in to whichever service you wish to use and select New Mail Account. Then simply input your username and password details. If everything works out, click Next and wait patiently for Outlook to import your data.

This process may differ slightly depending upon which services you chose, but they all essentially work the same way. After logging in, you'll see a screen similar to the following:

Once you hit Create Account, you'll notice that Outlook has added a new folder to its left pane called Other Accounts. By default, this contains nothing except the option to Add Another Email Address. Clicking that opens a new window where you can choose between downloading the necessary files to sync your existing accounts or setting up entirely new ones.

We recommend going through the latter route if you plan to make extensive changes to your current settings. Otherwise, go ahead and check off the boxes next to whatever accounts you'd like to link together. Once done, click OK, followed shortly after by Finish Setup.

Finally, return to Outlook and you'll now see a brand-new inbox tab displaying all incoming messages from your linked accounts. All of your labels and filters remain intact, meaning you shouldn't lose access to anything important unless you manually delete specific items.

You can rename the tabs at the top of Outlook's interface however you like, although we prefer keeping things simple.

How do I add multiple emails to inbox?

Adding emails to an inbox requires three steps: Selecting a folder, dragging & dropping an item, and finally confirming the action.

To begin, head back to your newly created mailbox page in Outlook and scroll all the way down until you reach the bottom of the list of folders. Underneath Other Folders, right-click on the box containing the label that matches your desired inbox name.

From there, select Move [folder]... and drag the item across to wherever you'd like it to end up. When you release the mouse button, you'll receive a prompt asking if you really want to move the selected item(s). Simply click Yes, again.

Finally, remember to give the new inbox a meaningful title before clicking Save Changes. From there, it'll appear alongside every other folder in the sidebar.

How do I manage multiple inboxes?

By far the most difficult part of managing multiple accounts is creating the correct rules for filtering and sorting emails based on their content. Thankfully, Outlook comes equipped with several tools designed specifically to help you achieve this objective. Head to File " Options " Rules & Alerts to explore these further.

Within the dialog box that appears, expand Categories and double-click DefaultFolder. Your choices here depend largely upon which services you intend to collect your incoming emails from -- but usually you'll either pick None or Application Specific Folder. For instance, if you plan to filter your emails according to the sender's domain, you could set up a rule to sort them accordingly.

Otherwise, leave everything else alone. Now, let's turn our attention towards creating a few useful filters. First, let's try separating our personal emails from business ones.

Head to Home "" Junk E-mail Filter "" Advanced Settings. Here, you'll see various fields labeled Name, Source, Sender, Subject line, Received date, Sent Date, Importance, Read status, and Delete flags. These control certain aspects of junk e-mails, including blocking senders who repeatedly contact you without permission, suppressing newsletters, hiding sensitive information, and automatically deleting spam.

In addition to this, feel free to toggle Show Filters, Hide Labels, and Include Subfolders to suit your preferences. Finally, ensure that Enable Automatic Processing is checked. That's it, you're good to go!

Now, let's tackle another common issue with Outlook: having thousands of unread emails cluttering up your view. This isn't necessarily bad because it means people still care enough to read past notifications. But eventually, it becomes hard to tell what's truly urgent and what's not worth checking.

Luckily, there's a relatively straightforward fix for this. Go to View "" Layout "" Main Window Size and type 2000 into Width and Height respectively. Doing so ensures your inbox never exceeds 2000 pixels wide, thus preventing hundreds of old emails from appearing side-by-side.

However, if you insist on seeing a larger amount of emails onscreen at once, you could always change the width to 1600 instead. This size is ideal for viewing large amounts of text.

Lastly, to prevent Outlook from opening new windows whenever someone sends you a message, press Ctrl + Alt + Shift + N simultaneously. Hold these keys down continuously until you're ready to continue working normally, then release them. Alternatively, enable Do Not Disturb mode via Tools " Options " Trust Center " General Tab " Change Status Bar Messages.

Can one email account have multiple accounts?

Yes, absolutely! However, bear in mind that doing so does affect how well Outlook functions overall. On average, users report experiencing around 15 percent performance degradation when dealing with more than one active mailbox. Some claim that this figure increases to 50 percent if you mix Exchange accounts with IMAP accounts.

Also, beware of potential security risks. Using multiple accounts exposes you to phishing attacks and identity theft attempts. And lastly, consider how much disk space these duplicate entries occupy. Emails stored locally in PST format consume roughly 1GB per month, whereas those sent away to providers are often compressed into ZIP archives. Thus, you're better off sticking to a handful of major accounts rather than dozens of minor ones.

If you're a longtime user of Microsoft's email client Outlook -- or just someone who wants their messages organized into logical categories such as personal and work -- then you may be wondering how you can combine your various online accounts without making things confusing within the program itself.  The answer is simple but it might not seem so obvious at first glance: You need to create folders that correspond with each account. This means that instead of using the same "Inbox" folder across several different services (e.g., Hotmail/Outlook), you'll use these new folders to organize everything. Let's take a look at how to set up your own system of organizing your mail from various sources like Google Mail, Yahoo! Mail and AOL.

First off, let me share some thoughts on why having more than one inbox in Outlook seems counterintuitive. When you open an e-mail message from any service provider, Outlook tries to find the most appropriate place for that message based on what type of content it has. For example, when viewing incoming messages from Hotmail, Outlook displays them in its default tab called Inbox. However, if you receive an e-mail message from Facebook, it appears under the Other category because Facebook doesn't provide users with access to view other tabs in Outlook. The problem here is that there isn't really anything separating those two types of messages. They both end up together and are indistinguishable from one another unless you know where to look. So now we come back around to creating our organizational structure. Here are four steps to help you accomplish that goal.

How do I separate my Gmail inbox?

When you log in to your Gmail account, you probably see something similar to the following screen. Your primary inbox contains dozens of messages, while additional ones reside in subfolders labeled Promotions, Spam, Updates etc. If you want to put all of your emails into a single folder in Outlook, you should simply right click on the left pane and select New Folder. Make sure that name corresponds with whatever label best describes the kind of correspondence that group of messages fall under, such as Personal, Business, Finance, Newsletters and so forth. Then drag every email from the Gmail inbox onto that newly created folder. Repeat this step for every folder that applies. Now whenever you browse through your Outlook inbox, you won't see duplicate entries. Instead, they'll all appear as individual files in the corresponding folders. Clicking on an individual message will bring up more information about it.

This also works well for newsletters since they often arrive directly in your Primary mailbox anyway. It's important to note that if you don't want certain labels showing up in your main Outlook inbox, you'll have to disable the Show Labels check box before moving them over to secondary folders. Otherwise, all of your labels will appear regardless of whether you've added them manually or automatically.  Now imagine combining all of your email addresses into this single Outlook inbox. That would certainly simplify things.

How do I make all my emails appear in one inbox in Outlook?

For people with large mailing lists, such as members of a club or organization, it's easy to lose track of which address sent you which piece of communication. By adding filters to your Outlook inbox, you can sort out your mass of mail much faster. First, head to Tools & Options...& Rules & More Rules.... Under Send/Receive Filters, choose Create Filter. A dialog window will pop up asking you to specify exactly what kind of data you'd like to filter. Select All Sent Messages containing Subject field =" Email Address. Enter a meaningful description next to Name:, such as Membership Club. Once you hit OK, Outlook will begin sorting your messages according to the parameters you specified and assign them accordingly. You can repeat this process as many times as needed depending upon how many unique subjects you're dealing with.

Once you apply filters, make sure that you enable Sort by Rule(s) in the General section. That way, your filtered messages will always remain at the top of the list. Also, if you ever decide to delete any of the rules, just head to Manage Rules & Alerts... & Delete Selected Rules. One thing to keep in mind though is that you can only apply filters to outgoing messages, not incoming ones.

Here's an example of what filtering looks like once you've applied it. Notice how even though there are hundreds of messages listed, it still stays reasonably clean. And if you ever wanted to change the rule, say for instance to include messages from specific domains, you could easily edit the rule settings.

How do I show all emails in inbox in Outlook?

To display all messages in one Outlook inbox, you're going to have to turn off the option Hide Unread Items. Head to View & Layout...& Options and uncheck the box next to Hide Read items. Alternatively, you could just add a little icon to the toolbar above your inbox that shows you a count of total number of unread messages. Personally, I prefer the latter approach.

You may notice that after doing this, certain messages become highlighted with blue borders. These are known as "flagged" messages and represent either important events or spam. While useful, flagged messages tend to clutter up your overall layout rather quickly. Fortunately, you can adjust the appearance of flags in order to minimize their visibility. Go to View & Display options...& Flags...and then tick off the boxes next to Auto hide flag icons and Always show priority symbols. With this done, you can focus solely on reading your actual messages without worrying about alerts popping up unexpectedly.

Finally, make sure that you leave the Default views toggle button unchecked. Doing so will allow you to switch between standard Views, i.e., Classic, Tiled Grid, List and Columns anytime you wish during normal usage.

How do I make all my emails go to one inbox?

If you already have a lot of active subscriptions from various providers, applying filters as described earlier in this article might prove difficult. Thankfully, there's an alternative solution. Just head to File & Account Settings...& Tab Groups...and add any existing accounts to groups in accordance with their respective subject matters. Afterward, you can further fine tune the grouping by heading to Home / Insert Accounts and selecting Add Another Group.... From there, you can give each group a catchy title and select the desired colors for the background and text color. Finally, hit Save Changes. Now, when you open your Outlook inbox, you'll see only those particular accounts' communications grouped together.

By using folders in conjunction with Outlook, you can drastically reduce the amount of time spent trying to locate relevant messages. Not to mention the fact that it helps relieve stress caused by receiving numerous notifications about new e-mails. Hopefully, you found these tips helpful. Please feel free to post questions or comments below regarding this topic. We'd love to hear from you.