How to change and combine inbox folders in Outlook?

When you add a new email account in Microsoft Outlook, it will create a new data file if you do not configure to deliver new message to Existing Outlook Data File.

The new data file shows as a folder with sub-folders of Inbox, Sent Items, Delete Items, etc. in the Navigation Pane. And all incoming email messages of this account will be saved in this sub-folder of Inbox. Therefore, there may be many inbox folders in your Microsoft Outlook.

And this article is arranged to guide you to change defaulted inbox folders, and combine multiple inboxes of different email accounts into one.

Change and combine inbox folders in Outlook

Easily merge specified inbox fodders of multiple accounts in Outlook

Change and combine inbox folders in Outlook

1: Open the Account Setting dialog box:

• In Outlook 2007, please click the Tools > Account Settings.
• In Outlook 2010, 2013 and the later versions, please click the File > Info > Account Settings > Account Settings. see the following screen shot:

2: In the Account Settings dialog box, select and highlight the email account you will change its inbox folder on the E-mail tab.

3: Click the Change Folder button. See the screen shot above.

4: In the New E-mail Delivery Location dialog box, select and highlight a folder from the Choose a folder: box.

Note: You can also create a new folder with clicking the New Folder button.

5: Click the OK button in the New E-mail Delivery Location dialog box, and the Close button in the Account Settings dialog box.

From now on, all new incoming email messages of configured email account will be stored in the selected or created folder you did in Step 4 automatically.

Note:

1. To combine multiple Inbox folders of different email accounts into one, please select the same folder in the Step 4 when you change inbox folders of other email accounts.
2. This method does not work for the Email account type of IMAP.

Easily merge specified inbox fodders of multiple accounts in Outlook

Here we introduce the Merge Inboxes feature of Kutools for Outlook to quickly merge Inbox folders from different accounts in Outlook.

Please do as follows to merge multiple inboxes in Outlook.

1. Click Kutools Plus > Folder related > Merge Inboxes. See screenshot:

2. In the opening Merge inboxes dialog box, click the Add button.

3. In the Please Select Folders dialog box, check the inboxes under email accounts you will merge, or right-click to select Check all from the context menu in the left Folders box to check all inboxes at the same time, and then click the OK button. See screenshot:

4. Then it returns to the Merge inboxes dialog with all specified inboxes listing out, please go ahead to:

• 4.1 Choose where to save the merged inboxes (here I select the Save the merged folder into a destination folder option);
• 4.2 In the Destination Folder section, click the button;
• 4.3 Select a folder or create a new folder to save the merged inboxes and click the OK button;
• 4.4 You can either merge all items in all inboxes or specify a date range of items to merge;
• 4.5 Click the OK button. See screenshot:

Note: The above setting will only copy items in inboxes, if you want to move items from the original folders instead of copy, please check the Move items instead of copy box in the Merge inboxes window.

5. After merging, a Kutools for Outlook dialog box will pop up, please click the OK button.

Now all inboxes merged completely into a specified folder, and items are categorized by message types as below screenshot shown: