SOLVED: How To Disable Focused Inbox on Office 365 Outlook Using The GUI or PowerShell

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:

1. Launch a PowerShell as an administrator
2. Enter Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned
3. Enter $UserCredential = Get-Credential
4. Enter your Office 365 username and password (must be an administrator)
5. Enter $Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://outlook.office365.com/powershell-liveid/ -Credential $UserCredential -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection
6. Enter Import-PSSession $Session -DisableNameChecking
7. Enter Set-OrganizationConfig -FocusedInboxOn $false
8. 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.