Set Up Single Inbox Folder For All Accounts In Outlook 2010/13

Undoubtedly, Outlook 2010 stands out when it comes to managing multiple email accounts, but it does not present any direct way to create a single Inbox folder, containing all mails from different email accounts. For example, if you want to view emails received from all configured email accounts including Yahoo Mai, Gmail, Hotmail etc., you cannot set a single folder for receiving or mirroring emails received in each email account. Fortunately, the Rules feature has the ability to set up a single folder for receiving mails from different email accounts. It allows you to set up a generic Inbox folder for receiving all mails in one folder. Thus, you don’t need to check each account for new emails manually since all emails will be collected in a single folder. In this post, we will create a simple rule that will direct all received emails to the specified folder.

Launch Outlook 2010 and from the left sidebar, select an account, right-click it and hit New Folder. From the Create New Folder dialog, enter an appropriate name and click OK.

Now head over to the Home tab and click Manage Rules & Alerts from Rules drop-down button.

From Rules and Alerts dialog, select an account and click New Rule.

In Rules Wizard, we will start off by creating a blank rule, click Apply rule on messages I receive and hit Next.

In this step of the wizard enable through the specified account option. From the bottom of the dialog window click specified account and select the desired account from the Account dialog window, and click OK. 

You will see the specified account in the bottom of the dialog window. Now click Next to continue

In this step, enable move it to the specified folder option, now click specified at the bottom of the window and select the Generic Inbox folder recently created, from New Rules and Alerts dialog.

You will see the folder name at the bottom of the window. Click Finish to end the wizard.

It will bring you back to the Rules and Alerts dialog, showing newly created rule. Click OK to apply this newly created rule.

For associating this folder with other accounts, repeat the whole procedure to direct all mails from multiple accounts to the Generic Inbox folder. On receiving emails, you will see all the emails in the specified mail folder.