On an Outlook or Microsoft 365 mailbox, the labels in Trupeo are your Outlook categories. A category you put on an email in Trupeo is on the conversation’s emails in Outlook, and a category you set in Outlook shows in Trupeo. How to put labels on, filter and search is in Sort conversations with labels; this page covers what is particular to categories.
This page is about a mailbox connected by signing in with its own Microsoft account, aliases included. A Microsoft 365 mailbox you reach through your own account instead (a shared mailbox, or one delegated to you) is different: its Outlook categories do not reach Trupeo, and its labels live in Trupeo only, with nothing written to the mailbox in Outlook. See Microsoft 365 shared mailbox or alias.
A category never decides whether Trupeo shows an email: it does not move it or hide it. An email categorized in Outlook is in Trupeo exactly when it would be without the category, in the Inbox or one of your folders for example, and only its category may be missing. To say who handles an email, see Say who’s on an email.
What a category does
- It goes on every email of the conversation, and comes off every one when you take it off. A conversation can carry several.
- It moves nothing. The emails stay in their folder. To file them, see File emails in folders.
- It has a color, in Trupeo and in Outlook. The color window offers the 25 colors of Outlook’s categories, with their names, and “No color”. The category takes the same one in Outlook, and Trupeo shows it in the color Outlook gives it. Every member can change it.
- Its name is one level. Outlook does not nest categories, so a
/is just part of the name. A name cannot contain a comma or a semicolon, and capitals do not matter: Invoices and invoices are the same category. - Every member can rename it. Outlook cannot rename a category, so Trupeo creates the category under the new name with the same color, puts it on every email of the mailbox it has fetched, then deletes the old one. Emails Trupeo has not fetched, such as old ones in Archive, keep the old name.
A category created in Trupeo is added to Outlook’s category list, so it is offered in Outlook too.
The owner can keep creating, recoloring, renaming and deleting categories to the owners, with the switch that does it for labels: see Sort conversations with labels. Members then still put existing categories on emails and take them off.
Delete a category
Every member of the mailbox can, unless the owner keeps it to the owners. Trupeo removes it from Outlook’s category list and takes it off every email it knows carries it. Emails Trupeo has not fetched, such as old ones in Archive, keep it: Outlook then shows it on them without a color. This cannot be undone.
Categories set in Outlook
A category added or removed in Outlook reaches Trupeo at the next update. Outlook tells Trupeo about every change to the mailbox’s emails, so it usually comes in shortly after. If that signal is lost, the next check catches it, within 3 hours at most.
Trupeo reads the categories of the emails in the Inbox, Sent Items, Junk Email and your folders. It also reads them in Archive and Deleted Items, on the emails of conversations it already has: a category set in Outlook on an email marked done, or deleted, reaches Trupeo too.
When you change an email’s categories in Trupeo and someone changes them in Outlook at about the same time, the change made last wins.
The question “Show the colors of your Outlook categories?”
To read your list of categories and their colors, Trupeo needs one more permission from Microsoft: access to the mailbox’s settings, where Outlook keeps that list. Trupeo asks for it when you connect the mailbox, together with the account’s contacts, since a contact group is an Outlook category: see The shared address book. A mailbox connected before Trupeo asked for it then, or reconnected after its owner stopped keeping its contacts up to date or chose “Not now” on the address book’s invitation, may not have it.
Until it has it, the owner of the mailbox sees a line at the top of the list, under the view’s title: “Show the colors of your Outlook categories?”, with “Allow” and “Not now”. “Not now” puts the question away for a month, on this device. To give the permission:
- Click “Allow”.
- On the Microsoft page, sign in with the mailbox’s own Microsoft account, as when you connected it. Trupeo refuses another account.
- Accept the permission. You come back to Trupeo, and the categories show their colors.
Members do not see the question: only the owner can give the permission.
If Microsoft says an administrator has to approve it, nothing else changes: the mailbox keeps working as it does now. See Connect an Outlook or Microsoft 365 mailbox.
Before the permission is given
Categories already work, by name alone:
- you can put a category on an email, take it off, and filter and search by it;
- you can create one: its name goes on the emails, and Outlook shows it on them, but it is not added to Outlook’s category list;
- there is no color, in Trupeo or from Trupeo;
- you can delete a category: it is taken off the emails Trupeo knows.
The window of a category says so: “Categories carry only their name here: no color, and a new one is not added to Outlook’s category list, until the mailbox’s owner allows Trupeo to read that list.”