Outlook 2016: How to disable Conversation Cleanup automatically deleting emails

Hello,

Conversation Clean Up evaluates the contents of each message in the conversation and should only delete redundant messages. If a message is completely contained within one of the replies, the previous message is deleted.

This feature is most useful on conversations with many responses back and forth, especially with many recipients. You are also unable to disable this feature completely. However, if Conversation Clean Up is deleting relevant emails, we will do our best to troubleshoot the issue for you.

To check if this issue is caused by the rules, we suggest that you check the current rules in Outlook and look for any rules that move emails from certain senders to the sent items or deleted items folder.

Keep updated on the status of the issue, and we will be glad to assist you further.

Respectfully, I do not agree.

While the Conversation Clean Up may seem like a useful addition to Microsoft, whether or not to use it should ideally be left to the user's discretion.

For me, I wish to be able to retain all emails/conversations in a thread till such time that I might want to delete it - that's how it works best with my workflow and correspondence documentation requirements. 

Microsoft is actually stepping into my freedom to work as I please by forcing me to work with an 'enhancement' that at least to me is of dubious value.

I am perfectly capable of deciding which emails to keep and which to delete and I do not need Microsoft or its software to decide on my behalf. Let me please decide which emails are relevant and which are not. Please do not decide for me - to me that is an untenable presumption.

I sincerely hope that I find a 'disable' option for Conversation Clean up  - preferably through Microsoft or failing that, through a third party.

We understand where you are coming from and we value your feedback about Conversation Cleanup. We highly recommend that you share your feedback and experience on the Outlook UserVoice page. This will help our team provide a better user experience in future updates.

Regards.

I second SKIDNY's request to disable automatic clean-up.

I too have to keep all emails. Moreover, I run a dtSearch indexing program on Outlook .pst regularly, and I do not want to find lots of "deleted" files later in my search results.

So, once again please provide the "manual" option for each new automated procedure for those who do not like full automation that you deem handy and cool.

We understand where you are coming from and we value your feedback about Conversation Cleanup. We highly recommend that you share your feedback and experience on the Outlook UserVoice page. This will help our team provide a better user experience in future updates.

Regards.

Hi,

I am trying to post my suggestion to 'Allow user to disable conversation clean up' on your Outlook UserVoice page - unfortunately, its not letting me.

Are you sure Microsoft wants me to post this?

SKIDNY, a partial work around is to change the destination folder to "Inbox":

Outlook settings, Mail:

Cleaned-up items will go to this folder:  (Browse, select Inbox)

However, if you have rules that move you incoming email around, it could be a conundrum...

I wonder if it is possible to put Outlook 2016 into an infinite loop: an incoming message is moved to a certain folder according to a rule, then it is "deleted" by the clean-up (moved to Inbox as I suggested), and then the rule applies again. Hmm.. :-)

This auto conversation cleanup started to happen to my outlook today.

This is really wrong. 

What are you trying to do, Microsoft? Turn Outlook into Messenger, or other social media messaging platform?

I think an option to disable it is immediately needed.

Your clients are mostly able to do clean up by themselves, there is no need for this. 

Emails, in businesses, are highly important/critical, and automatic deletion (although into deleted folder) is a disaster waiting to happen to many.

Please let an actual engineer handle the feature sets, leave the millennials to their social media. Their attention span is 5 minutes at most, most likely MS Outlook is not something they'd use, anyways.