In a corporate setting, having a FOCUSED INBOX will frequently be used as an excuse by staff for not responding. IT will receive a never ending stream of complaints and requests to tweak the algorithm which they can’t and would not want to do. As such most companies will want to set the Focused Inbox to off by default.
In the video below we demonstrate how to turn off the Focused Inbox using PowerShell because there is no GPO for it.
To Disable the Focused Inbox in Office 365
The Office 365 hosted Exchange Management Console does not provide a toggle to disable the Focused Inbox. However, you can relatively easily make the change through a set of PowerShell command:
- Launch a PowerShell as an administrator
- Enter
Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned - Enter
$UserCredential = Get-Credential - Enter your Office 365 username and password (must be an administrator)
- Enter
$Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://outlook.office365.com/powershell-liveid/ -Credential $UserCredential -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection - Enter
Import-PSSession $Session -DisableNameChecking - Enter
Set-OrganizationConfig -FocusedInboxOn $false - Enter
Remove-PSSession $Session
When a user next launches Outlook, it will have a yellow notification bar indicating that the Focused Inbox has been turned off by the Administrator but it can easily be turned back on if they want it.
6 Comments
Amir · August 16, 2022 at 12:07 pm
Thank you for the article. After disabling it for org, does the Yellow prompt show up only on the next launch or would it be there on every launch until the user X out of it?
Brian · December 23, 2021 at 8:31 am
Does this disable or simply toggle everyone to off?
The toggling is helpful but I would ideally like to prevent its use all together.
Ian Matthews · January 6, 2022 at 7:15 pm
Hi Brian;
It just toggles is off. Users can re-enable it 🙁
IJustKnowStuff · March 31, 2021 at 4:10 pm
Agreed. It can also blindside you if you move O365 tenants and only realize months later you’ve been missing out on important emails.
Also I personally still hate the Ribbon bar.
Craig Molnar · January 3, 2020 at 10:17 am
focused inbox was among the dumbest idea’s MS ever had, ranks right up there with “removing the start menu” in windows 8. It makes one wonder who would have greenlit such an idiotic change.
Sometimes hear people say, “just give it a chance” – yeah tell that to the IT admin that is already overworked, and starts getting tickets for this idiocy.
a2 hosting coupon · July 9, 2019 at 1:50 am
nice post