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Did you just come back from a relaxing two week vacation to an Inbox overflowing with messages? Would you like to catch up on whole discussions or conversations rather than scattered piecemeal through all the other messages? Do you hate replying to a message when someone already answered that question or solved that problem somewhere else in the thread?

Don't run back to the beach, just take control of the situation. With a couple of clicks, you can organize all the messages in your Inbox (or any other folder) by conversation or thread. You can read the messages grouped together in context and ordered by date, and not miss a reply or forward. The Arrange by command even includes the messages that you received before your vacation so that you can easily read the whole conversation.

See what you can do when you test drive the Arrange by Conversation command in Outlook:

• See all the messages grouped together into conversations.
• Easily see who replied to whom and when.
• Read all the messages in order, or just the ones with new information.
• Avoid replying to a message that has already gotten a reply.
• Catch up on a thread with new messages by seeing which ones you haven't read yet.
• Still respond to messages as you normally would: reply, forward, attach items, and delete.
• Drag the conversation heading to move the entire thread to another folder.

Click the arrow next to the conversation heading to see all messages in the conversation.

This message has no arrow; it has no replies associated with it.

To help you keep track of the conversation or e-mail message thread, the messages are indented to show you who replied to whom and when they replied.

All it takes is two clicks in your Inbox to align all your messages. (And it only takes two clicks to go back to your Inbox's original state when you finish reviewing the thread.) Then you can read through all your messages in context, in order, and catch what everyone else wrote.

To view messages by conversation, on the View menu, point to Arrange By, and click Conversation.

Tip  To bring that thread to the top of the list in your Inbox, click a specific message in a thread before clicking the View menu.

To further streamline your time in Outlook, learn more ways to arrange and organize your Inbox.