How to Disable ‘Clutter’ in Office 365 Mailboxes?

Megha Sharma | Updated On - 20 Oct 2021 |

Read time 3 min

The article describes the ‘Clutter’ feature of Office 365. Some ways to disable this feature in Office 365 are also described.

The Significance of the Clutter Feature in Office 365

First of all, ‘clutter’ means a set of dirty things collected at a place. This mailbox management feature was introduced to move the low-priority messages from Inbox to the “Clutter” folder (in the user mailbox) to reduce the Inbox clutter.

Clutter analyzes your mail management patterns to understand unimportant emails and then moves them to the Clutter folder as they arrive in Inbox. It is an easy way to manage unimportant emails. Also, you can bring back emails from Clutter to Inbox if you feel so.

Because some users rely on rules for managing the mails, this Clutter feature is unnecessary for them. Also, users who complain about not finding the specific emails crucial for them in their Inbox and can ignore the Clutter folder to check for the emails causing great confusion all over. So, they can consider disabling this feature.

Here we are discussing two ways for disabling the Clutter feature, one for administrators and the other for end users.

Outlook versions that support Clutter

• Outlook on the web for Exchange Server 2019
• Outlook on the web for Exchange Server 2016
• Outlook Web App Light Office for business
• Microsoft 365 admin Outlook on the web
• Outlook Web App for Office 365 Small Business
• Outlook Web App for Office 365
• Outlook 2021/Outlook 2019/Outlook 2016/Outlook 2013
• Outlook for Microsoft 365

How Can Office 365 Administrators Disable Clutter?

Open Windows PowerShell on your system. Connect to Office 365 using these steps:

1. Run this command first.
   $UserCredential = Get-Credential
2. It will ask for the Office 365 login credentials. Enter your Office 365 username, password and then click OK.
3. Now, run these two commands one after another.
   $Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://outlook.office365.com/powershell-liveid/ -Credential $UserCredential -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection

   Import-PSSession $Session -DisableNameChecking

4. Office 365 account is successfully connected through PowerShell. Execute this command to disable the Clutter feature for Office 365 mailboxes.
   For Single Mailbox –
   Set-Clutter -Identity “user name” -Enable $false

   For Multiple Mailboxes –

   $users = “user name 1″,”user name 2”
   ForEach ($user in $users) {
   Set-Clutter -Identity $user -Enable $false
   }

   For All Office 365 User Mailboxes –

   Get-Mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited | Set-Clutter -Enable $false

   Note: You can enable the clutter feature for your Office 365 mailboxes, by just passing the true value to -Enable parameter as shown:

   Set-Clutter -Identity “user name” -Enable $true

How Can Office 365 End Users Disable Clutter?

Office 365 end users can also easily disable/enable the clutter feature in their mailboxes. Open your mailbox and follow these steps:

1. Go to the gear-shaped Settings option and search for the ‘clutter’ word. Click on the Clutter option.
   
2. Now, clear the checkbox “Separate items identified as clutter” and click on Save to save the settings.
   

This will disable the clutter feature in your Office 365 mailbox.

Note: As per Microsoft sources, Clutter will be replaced with a new feature, namely, Focused Inbox.

Conclusion

Two ways to disable the Clutter feature are discussed here. Exchange administrators can use the PowerShell method which involves executing certain commands in the Exchange Online PowerShell (Office 365 configured in Exchange Online) to disable the clutter feature in single, multiple, and all mailboxes, whereas Office 365 end users can use the second method which involves disabling the feature through the settings of the Outlook on the web of the Office 365 account.