Issue: Unable to Assign Categories to Emails in Shared Mailboxes on Outlook for macOS

Question

Hello all,

I am using Outlook for macOS, version 16.86, which is the latest version available.

For some reason, I am unable to assign categories to individual emails in shared mailboxes. The button to assign categories is greyed out, whereas it was functional just yesterday.

I have tried removing and re-adding the shared mailbox, but this did not resolve the issue. Additionally, I no longer see the categories that were previously assigned to emails.

I have also checked if this problem occurs in Outlook Web Access (OWA), and there, the issue does not appear.

Does anyone else have the same problem or any ideas on how to effectively solve this?

Thanks

Martin

Answer 1

Same thing happening. Seems to only affect the Outlook app as categories are still accessible if I access the shared mailbox via browser. **edit: I've raised a ticket with Microsoft Support for this. This appears to fall under an issue that their engineers are investigating right now. Highly recommend affected users raise a support ticket. To do this:

• quit (Press (Command+Q), and restart Outlook
• Open an email from within the shared mailbox and try to apply a category
• Open another email from same or different shared mailbox, and do the same
• From the top menu, click "Help" → "Collect Diagnostics" → Ok → copy the Incident ID returned as you'll need than in the next step
• From the top menu, click "Help" → "Contact Support" to open a chat window where you can explain the problem and provide the Incident ID.

Answer 2

Same for me with version 16.85, my users can no longer use colors to organize emails in shared mailboxes. I worked around this by configuring the shared mailboxes with a user password instead of going through delegation mode..."

Answer 3

Same here ... so frustrating! I simply cannot do my job effectively without being about to create and use categories in Outlook. I use a shared mailbox where other users flag emails for various people and different escalation levels. Hopefully this is being prioritised by Microsoft engineers, or I have to find another email program...

Answer 4

Same issue here started on May 15th. Also on outlook for Mac:

Microsoft® Outlook for Mac

Version 16.85 (24051214)

Answer 5

The version v16.85 and 16.86 beta has a glitch with the Outlook app while the version 16.84.2 works perfectly for categories, even with the shared mailboxes and delegation accounts. Roll back to the previous version until Microsoft fix it with a new update