Outlook is Getting Message List Sorting with Dynamic Columns & Flag Due Date Support on Windows & Web

Microsoft isn’t done trying to get people off Classic Outlook. Just days after publishing a lengthy list of reasons to switch to New Outlook, the company has quietly revealed another quality-of-life improvement that can help millions find emails in crowded inboxes. The upcoming change won’t completely revamp Outlook from scratch, but it could make sorting messages a lot less frustrating.

New Outlook wants email sorting to make more sense

Anyone who regularly sorts emails by size, category, importance, or other custom fields has probably run into the same problem. Messages get rearranged, but it isn’t always immediately obvious why they appear in that order. Microsoft is now addressing that issue.

The upcoming sorting improvements, first spotted by Neowin, is tagged with Feature ID 564803 in the official Microsoft 365 roadmap portal. Per the entry, Outlook will automatically display the matching column in the message list. This will apparently happen when users sort messages using criteria outside the usual options like sender, subject, or received date.

In real-life scenario, sorting by message size will immediately show a Size column. Sorting by category will surface category information directly alongside emails.

There’s another feature coming to New Outlook

Microsoft is also adding support for sorting emails by Flag Due Date, a feature that could prove useful for people who use Outlook as a lightweight task manager. It’s worth noting that the new sorting improvements are scheduled to begin rolling out later this month for both Outlook for Windows and Outlook on the web.