Hello,

I posted a question on the Office 365 community but they suggested I post here instead. Please take a look at the thread as it describes the issue with screenshots that I'm facing. Seems to be a regression in functionality from Outlook for Mac 2011 to Outlook for Mac 2016.

https://community.office365.com/en-us/f/153/p/359255/977952

Thank you!

I'm having the exact same problem.  it's as though the conversation feature simply doesn't work in Outlook for Mac 2016.

Looking forward to a fix....Chris

Hi GP:

I've read your thread in Office 365 forum. Base on your description, the mail threads of same subject weren't group together, right? And following picture are the symptoms you saw?

This was what your view in Outlook 2016:

And this was your view which correct in Outlook 2011?

First I will need some more information from you besides what you have provided:

1. Did you upgrade from Outlook 2011 to Outlook 2016?
2. Where did you download the installation? From Office 365 portal or other download link?

Meanwhile we can try some steps to narrow down the issue:

1. Log on to webmail see if the conversation view work as expected.
2. Add/switch to another account, turn on Conversation view to see if it works.
3. Try Arrange and group items see if it solves your problem.

Please let me know the result. Thank you.

Hi Chloe,

The images did not show up for some reason, so can't confirm the view.

1. I did not upgrade from Outlook 2011 to 2016, both are running side by side at the moment.
2. I downloaded via Office 365 portal. I just recently signed up for O365 and got the download as part of the process.

Narrowing down:

1. When you say log on to webmail, I assume you mean mail.office365.com? Or is there somewhere else?
I went to mail.office365.com and tried to login with the email I used to sign up for Office 365 however it says: "Something went wrong. You're currently signed in with a Microsoft account as myemail@hotmail.com, but that account can't be used with Outlook. Please sign out of your Microsoft account, then sign in to Outlook with the account you use to read your organization's email." So then I tried signing in with my corp credentials, but those of course weren't recognized as we do not use O365 for company email.

2. I added my gmail account and conversations seems to be working there. So limited to exchange account at this point.

3. I tried the suggestions in the link but did not have any luck.

Thank you! I appreciate your help in trying to figure this out.

Hi GP:

Thanks for the clarification. I tested from my environment

1. Installed Office 2011 for Mac and set up my Office 365 mail account.
2. Installed Office 2016 for Mac and set up the same mail account.
3. The conversational view work as expected.

However, I noticed one interesting thing. Under Organize tab, if conversation is clicked, the message of same thread will be grouped. Otherwise, it will not. Could you please check if this is the case? Thank you.

Hi Chloe,

Thank you for this. Just a quick note, I am not using my Office 365 account for this. I am using my corporate email which uses another email system. Though I'm not sure that is the issue since Office for Mac 2011 works.

When I click the "Conversations" button, there is no change in the look or sorting of emails.

Thank you!

Hi GP:

Sorry for replying you late.

Have you tried rebuilding identities or repairing Office 2016? If not, do you mind trying these two approaches to see if it can solve the issue. So far, I haven't found any better solution yet.

Let me know the results, thank you.

I have the same problem. Some mails are grouped in Outlook 2016 while other mails that were correctly grouped in Outlook 2011 are not in Outlook 2016.

I have the impression that only mails are correctly grouped for which people hit the Reply button with accounts on the exchange server.

However for mails that come from outside my companies exchange server and just have the same Subject title, Outlook 2011 groups them (maybe because the Outlook 2011 client sees that the Subject title is the same), while Outlook 2016 does not group them (maybe because it doesn't check on client side for same Subject title but relies on some headers from the exchange server). Could that be the case?