Unified inbox for multiple IMAP/exchange accounts? [Outlook 2010]

Launch Outlook 2010 and from left sidebar, select an account, right-click it and hit New Folder. From Create New Folder dialog, enter an appropriate name and click OK.

Now head over to Home tab and click Manage Rules & Alerts from Rules drop-down button.

From Rules and Alerts dialog, select an account and click New Rule.

In Rules Wizard, we will start off with creating a blank rule, click Apply rule on messages I receive and hit Next.

In this step of the wizard enable through the specified account option. From bottom of the dialog window click specified account and select the desired account from Account dialog window, and click OK.

You will see the specified account in the bottom of dialog window. Now click Next to continue

In this step, enable move it to the specified folder option, now click specified in the bottom of the window and select the Generic Inbox folder recently created, from new Rules and Alerts dialog.

You will see the folder name in the bottom of the window. Click Finish to end the wizard.

It will bring you back to Rules and Alerts dialog, showing newly created rule. Click OK to apply this newly created rule.

For associating this folder with other accounts, repeat the whole procedure to direct all mails from multiple accounts to Generic Inbox folder. On receiving emails, you will see all the emails in the specified mail folder.

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What you could do is set up an IMAP email account, like google. Then let all you other accounts forward there mail to that one IMAP account, and that IMAP account is then the one you open on startup. That way you see all the mail at once.

Another nice thing about this option is you can use the consolidated account to filter out spam and other mail using the google filters and spam filters.

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Outlook doesn’t offer such a feature as sadly Search Folders are limited to the folder set or mailbox that they are created in. We can however use the Instant Search feature to generate such a list on-demand within a few seconds. To be more precise; 1 keyboard shortcut + 2 clicks.
Outlook 2010

Thanks to the fact that the Search options are on the Ribbon in Outlook 2010, creating the initial “Unified Inbox folder” query goes a bit quicker than with Outlook 2007;

1. Start an “All Mail Items” search via the keyboard shortcut; CTRL+ALT+A
2. Click on; This Week
3. Click on; Unread

Note: Optionally you can change the arrangement from “By Outlook Data File” to “Date” or any another field by right clicking on the Arranged By column.
Outlook 2007

As mentioned, creating the initial query for Outlook 2007 takes a bit more clicks but once configured, recreating the query takes 2 keyboard shortcuts and 4 clicks or 1 keyboard shortcut and 2 clicks when going via Recent Searches (see below);

1. Start and “All Mail Items” search via the keyboard shortcut; CTRL+ALT+A
2. Expand the Query Builder via the keyboard shortcut; CTRL+ALT+W
3. Via the Add Criteria button add the Received field (only needed the first time)
   Set the field to; This Week
4. Also add the Read field (only needed the first time as well)
   Set the field to; No

Note: Optionally you can change the arrangement from “By Outlook Data File” to “Date” or any another field by right clicking on the Arranged By column.
Recent Searches

Now that you’ve done the search once, it will be listed under the Recent Searches button on the Ribbon (Outlook 2010) or by clicking on the down arrow in the Search field (Outlook 2007). Up to 10 of your last queries are saved here.

Using the Recent Searches list speeds up creating a custom Unified Inbox folder.
This doesn’t reduce the amount of clicks compared to the method above for Outlook 2010 but it does when using Outlook 2007 or when you customize your query in for instance;
received:today folder:Inbox read:no
The above search query will look in all the folders which are named Inbox for items that were received today day and are marked as unread.
Note: When using Recent Searches, make sure you still start with the CTRL+ALT+A shortcut or you’ll only search within the current folder.
“Today’s Unread Mail” alternative

For a permanent indication of unread mail across all your accounts, you can create a “Today’s Unread Mail” Search Folder for each account and add that to your Favorites list.
It won’t be a truly “Unified Inbox folder” but it is the closest Outlook has to offer at the moment.

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EricTucson said:

After looking for a solution the easiest for me was the most low-tech. I have 5 different IMAP accounts in Outlook and in the beginning I had to click on the + sign, click on Inbox, scroll down to the next email, click on the + sign, click on Inbox, scroll down to the next email, etc. Each account has quite a few folders so the "Mail Folders" pane on the left was turning into a massively long tree unless I added the extra click of closing the tree after checking each Inbox. Not fun.

In the end I just used the "Favorite Folders" area on the left pane. I'm using Outlook 2007, not sure if it's the same for 2010. It's the top category in the tree. I dragged a link to my Inbox for each account (just drag the actual Inbox into that area and it will create a link) and cleared out the other folders. Now when I open Outlook I have all 5 Inboxes showing at top and I just click on the one I want to see. If a new messages comes in to any Inbox the link gets shown in bold so I know to check it, and most importantly I can switch from one Inbox to another with a single click. That area is always accessible on my screen no matter how many folders or trees I have open in the "Mail Folders" section under it so I'm always 1 click away from another Inbox.

You'll have to open up each IMAP folder tree to move emails from one folder to another, but that turns into mostly a maintenance issue as opposed to a "have to do it every single time I want to check my email" issue. Sometimes I want to do a quick email check before leaving but there's no way I was going to go through the brain damage of a dozen clicks to check everything.

Not perfect, but it gets me what I want quickly 90% of the time.

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EricTucson said:

After looking for a solution the easiest for me was the most low-tech. ... In the end I just used the "Favorite Folders" area on the left pane.

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weelzup said:

To add insult to injury... Outlook 2011 for Mac has a unified inbox for all accounts, but not their Windows based flagship. Nice going MS :shock:

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