Outlook 2010 Subject sort uses Thread-Topic for grouping

[Eric Graeber]

It appears that Outlook 2010 sorts and groups headers using the Thread-Topic field when you click on the Suject field column header instead of using the actual Subject field. This may not seem like an issue, however it turns out that Outlook does not update the Thread-Topic field when you accept a meeting request while both iPhone and Android e-mail clients do update that field. The net result is sorting headers by Subject in order to see who has accepted an invitation groups phone responses as "Accepted: <meeting topic>" separate from the Outlook responses which end up groups under the subject "<meeting topic>" even though their actual Subject field has been changed to "Accepted: <meeting topic>".

I have been unable to find a way to change the behavior of Outlook with regard to using the Thread-Topic field for sorting/grouping. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

-- Eric

 

[Diane Poremsky]

Technically, Outlook does it correctly when it groups by the conversation index /thread topic field - the responses group with the original meeting, not as new threads.

Did try grouping by Subject instead of conversation?

 

[Eric Graeber]

I have selected to group by subject and sort by subject as shown in this example:

The issue is that Outlook is not grouping by the contents of the Subject field, it is grouping by the contents of the Thread-Topic field. Both Android and iPhone e-mail clients updated the Thread-Topic field to "Accepted: Test meeting" but Outlook left it at "Test meeting". The problem is that Outlook does something different from what the phones' e-mail clients do. I would expect that if I sort and group by Subject, these would all be grouped together. Is there any way to make that happen?