This article relates to the single inbox of POP accounts added to Outlook, which is not much used anyways. When used POP3 in the older versions of Outlook, all emails are delivered to a single PST file, which also resulted in a single inbox folder for all the emails from different accounts. But in later versions (Outlook 2010 and onwards), there is a dedicated file for each account.
Sort emails by Email accounts in Outlook
If you still need to use POP based accounts in Outlook, this article will tell you how you can separate the folders for receiving messages from different account and how you can sort the emails in a single inbox based on different accounts.
How to Set dedicated PST file and inbox for each account?
If you are using older versions of Outlook, you will have a single PST file for each POP3 account, which means, a single unified inbox.
But you can change the settings to make a new PST file for a different POP account and also assign a different folder.
- Go to File > Account Settings > Account Settings
- Select the account for which you want to change the PST file and inbox folder
- Click on “Change Folder” at the bottom. Do not click on “Change” button at the top. That one is for different group of settings.
- It will ask for “New Email Delivery Location.” Click on New data file PST
- Name the PST file whatever you want, preferably it should be the name of the email address
- Now, simply select the ‘Inbox’ folder in the newly created PST file
- Press OK and then ‘Close’
Now, all the emails from this POP3 account will be saved to the new PST file and will be shown in the inbox folder dedicated to only this account.
But note that all the previous emails will still be in your combined inbox folder. If you want, you can manually move then to your new inbox folder.
Another option is to apply rules to redirect emails that were sent to a specific account to a different folder within the same PST file or different PST file. But Outlook rules can make things more complicated. If you just want simplicity, the above method of going to Account Settings is the best way to go. But also know that with ‘rules,’ you can do additional stuff to further organize your emails that will fit your style particularly. For some users, setting up new rules to move emails sent to a specific account to different folders is a better way.
If you already have different PST files for different POP3 accounts but just want to change the folder for different email accounts, all you have to do is skip the 4th step above. Instead of selecting “Outlook Data file (.pst),” simply select the folder of your choice or create a new one where you want the emails to be delivered.
One final and optional method:
If you do not want to separate the inbox folder and the PST files, there is a way to see which account the email was sent to and even sort them based on that.
All you have to do is create a new column that shows the account email is associated with.
- Go to View tab in Outlook ribbon > current view > View Settings > columns
- Select “All Mail fields” where it says ““Select available fields from”
- Then select “Email Account” from the available columns list below.
Adjust the number of lines and increase them if you need to. You can also move the “Email Account” field up.
Now, in the list of your emails, one more column will be added that will show the ‘Email Account’ the mail was sent to.
Related readings: https://www.uslsoftware.com/how-to-sort-emails-in-folders-and-how-to-manage-folders-in-outlook/
We hope the above suggestions work for you in better organizing your inbox and making your emailing workflow more efficient. Keep in mind that if you do not necessarily need POP3 accounts, you can switch them to IMAP, which is a lot more flexible and more modern approach for retrieving emails by email clients like Outlook.