Outlook 2013 Folders view

Question

I have users that need to access public folders, and under the default Mail view they are not shown.

However if I click the little ellipsis button on the bottom row where the Mail, Calender, People and Tasks buttons are and then choose 'Folders', everything including public folders are displayed.

So my question is, can you either make this view the default view for the Mail view or can you get the public folders to appear in the Mail view?

Answer 1

You can't make the Public Folders to appear in the Mail view. But if you switch to Folders view, Outlook will remember it and keep it after restart.

Update:

I just found a nice way to workaround this! What you can do is to use Public Folder Favorites to achieve the desired result (at least partially):

1. Open Folders view, go to Public Folders and add required PFs to PF Favorites by right-clicking them and selecting Add to Favorites... context menu item.
2. Right-click any folder in PF Favorites and select Show in Favorites context menu item.
3. Go to the Mail view and find your favorite public folders in the top part of the Mail view.

Not exactly what you want, but at least something!

Answer 2

I know this is an old thread, but just in case anyone else finds their way here like I did while looking for other ways to do this...

You can customise the Navigation options via the registry.

HCKU\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Outlook\Preferences contains three settings which correspond to the 'Navigation Options' in Outlook 2013:

1. ModuleVisible15 controls which of the options are visible to the user.

2. NumBigModulesAB controls which how many items are shown (the rest are hidden within the '...' button)

3. ModuleOrderAB controls which order the items show in, with the first being default shown upon opening Outlook.

For example, I have used a Group Policy to deploy these settings to end users:

"ModuleVisible15"="0,1,1,1,0,1,0,0,0"
"ModuleOrderAB"="5,2,3,4,6,1,7,8,9"
"NumBigModulesAB"=dword:00000004

Which sets the visible items to 'Folders', 'Calendar', 'People' and 'Tasks', with no other items inside the '...' (the rest are hidden as we don't use them in our environment anyway).

Since 'Folders' is first in the list, it is the default for users when they open Outlook.