Office 365 Clutter Removal: Full Tutorial

Using clutter features in Office 365 can miss important emails. For the organization, this leads to many missed opportunities and compliance risks. To prevent this, you disable clutter in Office 365. In this, I will explain everything, so read the article to the end.

Clutter Feature in Office 365

Microsoft introduced a Clutter folder that helps you to manage your mailbox. This feature allows you to focus on important emails as it moves the low priority message from your inbox to a separate folder called Clutter folder. This way you can focus more on important emails.

This feature uses machine learning to study your past email actions (like what you read, what you ignore and what you delete) so that it filterise your data. Once it understands your pattern, it automatically starts moving less important emails into the clutter folder.

Many users may confuse clutter with the Junk email. But, they are very different from each other. Junk folders contain spam or potentially malicious emails. Whereas, a clutter folder contains low priority messages like subscription, notification or announcement so that it keeps you from any distractions. But, sometimes users want to disable the clutter from their Office 365 functions for many reasons which we have explained below.

Read Also: Why Office 365 Emails Going to Junk?

Why Need to Disable Clutter Feature in Office 365?

The clutter feature is very useful as it helps you to stay focused. However, sometimes, it also creates problems for you such as these.

• Although, clutter uses machine learning to identify your pattern. But, sometimes it mistakenly redirects important messages to the clutter folder which causes delayed response and missed opportunities.
• If users do not know that clutter features are enabled and are silently moving your backgrounds.
• Users will be confused and it will be hard for them to search their emails.
• Some may confuse junk with clutter, this will lead to mismanagement of emails.
• There can be inconsistencies of clutter feature syncing in all your devices or email clients. For example, in Outlook you can see your email in the clutter folder. But, in the Outlook Web App you couldn’t find that email.
• Also, having multiple folders makes it difficult to manage your emails.
• Retrieving your emails from the clutter inbox is difficult, when the organization goes through legal discovery or compliance audits.
• There are chances of accidentally deleting emails in the clutter folder.
• Retention policy can be set in the clutter folder. Therefore, after the completion of the set period, you may lose some data.

Many Office 365 users complain about missing their emails because of clutter. Therefore, we will explain how you can disable clutter in office 365.

Note: In 2020, Microsoft retired the clutter feature and introduced Focused inbox. This feature keeps all your emails in the inbox but visually they separate the inbox into two tabs: Focused and Other. So, Microsoft diminished the clutter feature, however, if you are using the old business account, then you may see the clutter folder and can disable it. By following these methods.

Prepare your Data Before Disabling Clutter Feature

Whenever you have to make any changes in Office 365 data. You should have to first take necessary precautions. This is because in any organization if you make any mistake. They have to bear a lot of problems. Similarly in this situation, turning off the clutter folder may also lead to losing the data.

That’s why, first take the backup of your data. Office 365 does not have any native options to save your data. But, if you use SysTools Office 365 Backup Tool an expert recommended utility you can save your entire Microsoft 365 data including clutter folder. Once, you complete this step, you can now go through the methods.

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How to Disable Clutter in Office 365?

If your Outlook Web App is still connected with the old Office 365 account. Then, you can see your clutter folder. To disable it, we have the methods you can use. Other than that, you can also disable the feature from the PowerShell command. So, there are several ways to disable it, let’s see how this works one by one.

Turn Off Clutter from Outlook Web App

If the feature is still there in OWA, then follow the steps below.

1. First, sign in to Web Outlook with Office 365 credentials.
2. Go to the settings option by clicking the gear icon.
3. Select the view all settings option. This will lead to the settings page.
4. In the Mail option, click on Automatic processing. Then, hit the Clutter option.
5. Choose Don’t separate items identified as clutter or turn off Separate items identified as Clutter boxes.
6. Now, save the changes.

This way, your clutter feature will disable. If you are having problems doing this, there is another method you can use.

Disable Clutter in Office 365 using PowerShell

PowerShell also helps you to turn off the clutter feature. For this, follow the commands.

1. First, open Windows PowerShell and connect to Exchange Online with this command: $UserCredential = Get-Credential
   Connect-ExchangeOnline -UserPrincipalName [email protected] -Credential $UserCredential.
2. To disable the clutter for the specific mailbox use this command: Set-Clutter -Identity “[email protected]” -Enable $false.
3. Turn off clutter for all users in organization, this command will help you: Get-Mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited | Set-Clutter -Enable $false.
4. After that, disconnect the Exchange Online with Disconnect-ExchangeOnline.

By following these options you can disable your clutter from your Office 365 account. After that, you can switch to a focused folder for your data management.

Conclusion

In the latest version of Microsoft 365, you will not find the clutter folder. But, if you are using the older version, then you may see this feature and it causes you problems. This is why we have provided you two ways to disable clutter in Office 365. But before using them, make sure you take the backup of your data for any issues while disabling the clutter.