Helpdesk Baruch College

How to Use the Conversation Clean Up Tool in Outlook

Some people like to keep their Outlook folders completely managed, with emails neatly categorized and kept in a rational, minimal folder structure. Most of us aren’t like that, so Microsoft has actually offered tools to assist. One of these tools is the obscure Conversation Cleanup tool, which erases or moves redundant e-mails from a conversation. Here’s how it works.

You can run the Conversation Clean Up tool versus a single discussion, a folder, or a folder and all of its sub-folders. It tries to find emails that are redundant, which suggest those that are included in full in another message in the conversation. It then erases (by default) or moves these emails to another folder, depending upon how you’ve set it up. This assists keep your mailbox from being filled with several copies of the same message.

First, you require to set the Conversation Clean Up specifications. Head to File > > Options > Mail and then scroll down to the “Conversation Clean Up” area.

By default, Conversation Cleanup erases products, but if you wish to move redundant products to a folder rather, you can click “Browse” and choose the folder to which you want to move them. This comes in handy if you want to verify on your own that the messages the tool discovers truly are redundant. The Conversation Cleanup tool is reputable in our experience, however often there’s no alternative to checking things yourself.

You can most likely leave the other default options as they are due to the fact that they make a lot of sense, but if your scenario or preferences are different, go ahead and switch the parameters on or off as you please. When you’ve got the settings the way you desire, click “OK” to return to Outlook.

Now, you need to open the tool. On the “Home” tab, click the “Clean Up” button. The drop-down menu offers you the choice to tidy up the discussion that’s currently chosen in the folder, the entire folder, or the entire folder and all of the sub-folders.

You can also access this menu by clicking Folder > > Clean Up Folder if you do not need the “Clean Up Conversation” alternative.

We’ll opt for “Clean Up Folder” for now, but the procedure is the same whether you tidy up a conversation, a folder, or a folder and its sub-folders. And for a one-click option, you can always right-click a folder in the Navigation pane and choose “Clean Up Folder.”

The very first time you run this tool, a warning appears, providing you the alternative to alter the settings, run the tool, or cancel the operation.

If you want the tool to run without seeing this popup, allow the “Don’t reveal this message again” option.

Click “Clean Up Folder” to run the tool (if you turned on the “Don’t show this message once again” option then from this time onwards the tool will run as soon as you choose it). When the tool is running, which can take a little while if you’re running it for the very first time on a folder with a lot of messages, a status notification appears in the bar at the bottom of Outlook.

You can keep utilizing Outlook while this is running. When the status notification disappears, the tool has actually ended up. It will not tell you that it’s completed– the tool is designed to run in the background to assist you, not bombard you with messages– however it will inform you if it can’t find any messages to tidy up.

That’s all there is to it. When we ran this tool on an example folder containing 2487 emails, it found 502 mails that could be erased. Over a fifth of the e-mails in the folder was redundant, so it’s an eye-opener and a tool worth using if you’re lacking space or tired of wading through discussions.

You can run the Conversation Clean Up tool against a single conversation, a folder, or a folder and all of its sub-folders. By default, Conversation Cleanup deletes items, however if you desire to move redundant products to a folder instead, you can click “Browse” and choose the folder to which you want to move them. We’ll go with “Clean Up Folder” for now, but the process is the same whether you clean up a discussion, a folder, or a folder and its sub-folders. Click “Clean Up Folder” to run the tool (if you changed on the “Don’t show this message again” choice then from this time onwards the tool will run as quickly as you select it). When we ran this tool on an example folder including 2487 emails, it discovered 502 mails that could be erased.

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