Outlook phone app moves mail from folder to inbox

Hi @Sheri Marlin,  

Thanks for reaching out to the Q&A community.

Regarding your concern, you're experiencing a frustrating issue where the Outlook mobile app appears to move emails from folders back into your inbox, especially for messages older than a month. This behavior is not typical and may be caused by a few different factors. Let me provide you some clarification and potentially resolve the issue: 

• First of all, I'd suggest you use the Outlook Web App (https://outlook.office.com to verify where emails are actually stored. The Web version is the most stable one out of all three versions and check location of the emails on there will help you to indicate if this error is due to sync conflicts between Desktop and Mobile or not. 

If you're using rules or manually moving emails into folders on your desktop, but the mobile app is not syncing properly, it may appear as though emails are being "moved back" to the inbox. In reality, the mobile app may be: 

• Not syncing folder changes correctly, or 
• Displaying cached inbox content that hasn’t updated yet. 

You can try clearing the cache of the Outlook mobile app or reinstalling it to force a full resync. 

The Outlook mobile app does not always reflect folder rules or changes made on the desktop. In some cases, emails moved by rules may not show notifications or may appear to "revert" to the inbox view

You can: 

• Use the Focused Inbox feature to help prioritize important messages. 
• Report the issue via Settings > Help & Feedback > Contact Support in the app. Microsoft’s product team is aware of this limitation and is collecting feedback for future updates  

In some case, some Android devices (especially Samsung) have built-in spam filters that can interfere with Outlook. These filters may move emails between folders or override Outlook’s folder structure. 

• Open the default email app on your Android device (if installed). 
• Go to Settings > General Settings > Spam addresses. 
• Remove any entries that include your domain or trusted senders  

If your organization has retention policies or auto-archive settings enabled, these could be moving emails between folders automatically. Please check with your IT admin or review your account’s retention settings in Outlook Web or Admin Center. 

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