Q: What is the Clutter feature within Office 365 and how do I turn it off?

This article refers to the Office 365 Email and Calendaring Pilot. If you're looking for Exchange Email and Calendaring on the Exchange 2013 Server, see: MIT Email Setup Landing. If you're not sure which system you're using, see: How do I tell if my email and calendaring data is on Exchange 2013 Server or using Office 365?

On this page:

• I received an email about the clutter feature within Office365.  
• How do I disable or reenable the Clutter feature within Office365

Context

• After moving to Exchange Online (Office365), I noticed a Clutter mailbox with an email from MS titled "What is Clutter?
• Within Outlook on the Web (OWA), the Clutter setting is enabled by default.

Overview

• Clutter is an email filtering option available to Office 365 customers in Outlook on the Web, Outlook 2016 and native Outlook and OWA clients for Android and iOS.  It is similar to an anti-spam filter as it moves less important email (based on your reading habits) into a 'Clutter' folder where they can be ignored or reviewed later.  Most of the mail going into the folder should be bulk mail (advertisements) and messages from mailing lists.  However, you will want to periodically check the Clutter folder as it may move legitimate email into this folder.

Use clutter to sort low priority messages in Outlook

Training Clutter

You can "Train" clutter by manually dragging messages of a type you don't want to see into the folder and ones that shouldn't be clutter out of it.

How to Disable or Enable the Clutter feature

1. Log into OWA
2. Click the settings icon (gear in upper right corner)
3. Select Options
4. Select Automatic Processing
5. Under Clutter select "Don't separate items identified as Clutter"
6. Click Save
   

Why does all my mail go to clutter?

Users of Emacs mail readers, MH, etc.: If you regularly use IMAP or POP to do bulk moves (download and delete) of your entire Inbox contents to read elsewhere (instead of leaving messages stored on the server), Clutter will eventually file almost all of your email into the Clutter folder. Test messages sent by you to yourself will never get marked as Clutter, which complicates troubleshooting.

See also

• Office 365 - Email and Calendaring Pilot Landing Page
• Office 365 - Email and Calendaring Pilot - Known Issues
• Office 365 - Email and Calendaring Pilot - FAQ