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Outlook tips for GMail fans!

Are you none of those who simply love GMail for its conversation view? And long for similar arrangement of your Official Emails in that format as well??

Well ... I have a good news for you! I just discovered that Outlook also has a conversations view to arrange emails as in the GMail window.

It might be surprising to know that Conversation View which GMail sold as probably one of the most compelling innovation [Read the 3rd and 6th paras here], was always present in Outlook. For all you know not just Outlook but even other email clients like Lotus Notes, Thunderbird, and the non-so-well-known-ones might also have this mode of arrangement.

But as Shiv Khera says(I tweaked his phrase a bit to suit my context) :
Successful companies don't do different things - they do things differently!

Google definitely used the same idea - but presented it in a completely different manner. More so, one should clearly appreciate that GMail is a Web-application while Outlook a Desktop App - implementing features as powerful as Desktop App isn't easy in a WebApp. It is the way GMail presented the whole concept to users is what makes it useful.

In fact this makes Google the perfect post-internet incarnation of what Microsoft was in the pre-internet era. Microsoft neither invented DOS nor the concept of Mouse-and-Windows - DOS was a Seattle Computer Corp innovation while Mouse/Windows was conceived by Apple's Steve Jobs. But the way Microsoft popularized these tools - the marketing/ sales / advertising/ buzz - that made these products Microsoft trademarks.

Coming to Step by Step procedure of enabling 'Conversation View' in Outlook:

  1. Go to View Menu ->Arrange By->Uncheck the "Show in Groups" Option (which is usually enabled by default)
  2. Again Go to View Menu ->Arrange By-> and click "Custom"
  3. A new dialog opens up:
    1. Click "Group By" button -> Select "Conversation" in the "Group Items By" dropdown. Note that the Automatically Group according to arrangement checkbox should be unchecked
    2. Click "Sort" button -> Select "Received" in "Sort Items By" dropdown-> check "Descending" radio button
  4. Click Ok/Apply and lo! You are done with it.
  5. For better readability you might want to make some more settings.
    1. In the View Menu ->Arrange By-> Custom dialog -> Click "Other Settings" button. Now under "Grid Lines and Group Headings" section check the checkbox "Shade group headings"
    2. View Menu->Expand Collapse Groups->click "Collapse All Groups"
Well .. I know there are some smart ones out there who are probably smirking at me for discovering this so late, when they knew it all this while. But this post is intended more those like me who did not know this.

For my contacts: It was blocking of GMail access that prompted me to engage in all this research. So, since I cannot access my GMail account from office any more - if there are any urgent emails please send them to nikhil.kulkarni_at_kpmg.co.uk .
Please DO NOT SEND FORWARDS or any other unecessary stuff on my official email - it is only to be used for urgent matters. I will be blocking any address that spams my official inbox with unecessary stuff!

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