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I am running the Outlook 2016 application (Professional Plus) on a Windows 10 machine. I have a set of categories that I use for my primary mailbox. I also have added several additional mailboxes that I share with others. In those mailboxes, we use different sets of categories to assign ownership, priority, etc.

Since upgrading to Outlook 2016, I have found that when I apply a category to a message in my primary inbox, if that same message also exists in one or more the shared mailboxes, the category is applied to it there as well. (Even though that category doesn't actually exist in that box.)

This is causing chaos in our shared mailbox environment. My Google-Fu has failed me in finding a solution. Does anyone know how to STOP the application of categories to messages across all mailboxes a user has access to?

GeekInOhio
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1 Answers1

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You need to know that Outlook categories is not more than a text field (property) of any Outlook item including message. This means that when you apply a category to a message, Outlook writes this category name as a text right to that message. This is why everyone can see it. And you can't change this behavior, sorry.

The category list you see in Outlook (with colors) called Master Category List. And it just allows you to see colors for matching category names.

thims
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  • I appreciate the response @thims. Two questions:

    1. Why was this not an issue when we were all on Office 2007? Did something about categories change following 2007.

    2. If I fill that text field property on the message object in my inbox, why does it also get filled on other message objects in other boxes? I can see if I forward my message to that box, but not a distinctly different message object. What am I missing?

     – GeekInOhio Jun 27 '18 at 16:43