Sorting Messages in Outlook Express

Sorting Messages in a Folder

If you want to change the way your messages appear in a folder you can sort them by their properties (e.g. when received). The available properties are those which you see in the message columns.

If you change the visible columns you also change what properties that are available to sort by. As an example, if the attachment column is not visible then it is not available to sort by.

To change what message properties are displayed proceed as follows:

1. Screen shot 1 shows the inbox and its' messages notice that only three columns are displayed. The columns for priority and attachment are missing.

columns outlook express 1

2. Select view>Columns. A window shows all the available property columns and those that are currently being displayed are checked. To hide a property column uncheck the box and to view a column check the box. The order in which they are displayed can be changed by using the move up/move down button. Check the box next to attachments and priority.

columns outlook express 2

3. To rearrange the order highlight the property and click the move up/move down button. The screen shot below show the attachment and priority columns moved to the top.

columns outlook express 3

4. If we know look at the inbox we can see that the priority and attachments columns are now visible. We can now use these columns to sort the messages.

columns outlook express 4

5. The easiest way of sorting by a particular property is to click that column header as shown in the screen shot below. You should also note that the arrow indicates the order of sorting (ascending/descending) and also which of the columns is being used for sorting. In this case we are sorting on the received column and the sort order is ascending. To reverse the order just click again. To sort by another column just click that column header.

6.Finished.

Using Views to Mange Messages

Another way of managing messages in a folder is use views. To learn how to create your own custom views see the tutorial Creating Custom Views in Outlook Express.

Related Articles and Resoures:

This article/tutorial was written and tested on Outlook Express 6.0. It should also be applicable to Outlook Express 5.5. It may work on previous versions of Outlook Express with minor modifications.

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Sorting Messages in a Folder