Group e-mails quickly, yet leaving them in the inbox?

Question

I normally leave all my e-mails in my inbox, as I feel the overhead of creating a folder structure is not worth it, and often actually makes finding e-mails even harder. But sometimes I'd like to group e-mails quickly, e.g. if there are multiple threads concerned with the same short-term event.

Is there a way in Outlook 2010 to do so without moving them out of their respective original folders (i.e. Inbox, Sent Items)? Moving them into folders means I'll no longer see them when looking in the inbox, so I have to remember which e-mails I moved somewhere else.

Creating a tag for every such event is rather cumbersome as well.

Answer 1

This is where Outlook Search Folders can be handy. If you have some kind of criteria for grouping mentioned emails, you can create a search folder and have all related messages in a single virtual folder (you can delete this folder safely later).

Update

To be able to manually group messages using search folder, you can use Outlook user-defined properties:

1. Open Inbox and switch to View ribbon tab.
2. In Current View group click View Settings button and then Columns... button.
3. Click New Column... button and type some name. For example: Group.
4. Click OK, OK and OK to save view changes.

Now you have the user-defined property named Group and you can use this property to create a search folder:

1. Create a custom search folder, say Test.
2. Open its Criteria properties and follow the Advanced tab.
3. Click Field button and select User-defined fields in Inbox -> Group in the menu.
4. Now you can either select is not empty Condition or specify contains Condition and Test as a Value if you want to strict search criteria to "Test" values only.
5. Click OK and OK to save search folder properties.

Now you have the search folder that will show you items with Group property set. How can we set this property with ease? By using VBA macro like this:

Sub SetGroupProperty()
    For Each Item In ActiveExplorer.Selection
        Item.PropertyAccessor.SetProperty "http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/string/{00020329-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}/Group", "Test"
        Item.Save
    Next
End Sub

This macro sets Group property value to Test for currently selected items. You can place the button that runs this macro right on your Outlook ribbon and then set this property for selected items with a click of a mouse. And these items immediately appear in our search folder!