Received and sent messages in a single mailbox with MS Outlook for OSX

Microsoft Outlook for the Mac and PC behave differently when showing conversations in the Inbox. The PC shows received and sent messages. The Mac shows only the received messages.  There is no default way to show a threaded conversation on Mac Office 2016.

Microsoft Outlook for the Mac is integrated with OS/X spotlight search so that AppleScript and Spotlight can be used to create Outlook Smart Mail folders. Smart Folders are more like views into mailboxes than actual mailboxes. They are virtual folders that are created from the results of a search.  This blog leverages Outlook's raw search capabilities that come from OS/X integration.  You can find out more information about this integration on the Microsoft answers web site. Portions of this blog came from this excellent blog posting.

Identify Mailboxes to be included in Smart Folder

Our conversation SmartFolder is made up of the contents of the Inbox and Sent mailboxes. We first need to identify the Microsoft Outlook folder identifiers for the two mailboxes.

• Run Outlook
• Highlight the Mailbox,  we are going to include, Inbox or Sent. We want to get this mailbox's folder id.
• Start a Mac Spotlight search
• Enter applesoft and Enter to bring up the applesoft editor.
• Enter the following in the applescript editor and run it

on run {}
tell application "Microsoft Outlook"
get selected folder
end tell
end run

• It should return the results of the execution
  
  mail folder id 109 of application "Microsoft Outlook"
• Do the same thing for the other mailbox.  
• My mailbox numbers were 109 (Inbox) and 112 (Sent)

Create an integrated Threaded Conversation 

Build Smart Folder with a Raw Search

• Click on the Search field in the upper right hand corner of the Outlook view.
• This will enable the search tab and ribbon
• Select the Search tab
• Select All Mailboxes" in the Ribbon Bar
• Press the Advanced search button in the ribbon
• Select Raw Query from the drop list. 
• Enter the following query, replacing 109 and 112 with the mailboxes numbers retrieved above.
  com_microsoft_outlook_folderID == 109 || com_microsoft_outlook_folderID == 112
• Press Enter.  The Smart Folder should populate with the combined content of the two folders. Conversations in this combined Index/Sent folder will include both inbound and outbound messages.
• Press Save Search in the Search ribbon bar and enter the name of your new Smart Folder.

Your search bar should look something like the following

Caveats

Smart folders are query result views and not real folders. You can use the standard Search functionality against a Smart Folder.  The system treats the additional Search terms as part of the Smart Folder's query and will ask you if you wish to change the folder query every time you move Outlook from the Smart Folder to a traditional folder.  You can tell Outlook to "not save" the changes.  Yeah, it is kind of annoying.

Create an Unread Email Smart Folder

You can create a Smart Folder of just unread messages similar to the conversation folder described above.

• Select the Inbox
• Select Search
• Select the Search Tab if it is not showing
• Select Advanced Query in the Search Ribbon
• Change the query type to Raw
• Enter the following into the raw query area:

com_microsoft_outlook_unread != 0

• Press Save Search and enter the name of the new Smart folder.

Additional Resources

Discussion on the mdls command and Mac / Outlook variables for raw queries can be found in this Apple discussions thread.

Created 2016 Feb 02