Outlook displays the number of unread email messages to the right of each folder. Depending on how you use your folders, knowing the total number of messages in a folder might be more beneficial to you. For instance, if you only store messages that have unfinished business, knowing the total number of unfinished tasks at a glance might be very helpful.

The good news is, you can display the total number of messages or the number of unread messages for each folder. The bad news is, you’ll have to choose. You can have one number for each folder. To reset this property to display the total number of messages, do the following:

  1. In the Navigation Pane, right-click the folder in question.
  2. Choose Properties from the resulting submenu.
  3. Click the General tab (if necessary).
  4. Click the Show Total Number Of Items option.
  5. Click OK.

The green number in square brackets, [92], equals the total number of messages in the Inbox. Below, RadActiviti is still set to the default; the blue number in parentheses is the total number of unread messages. The display properties are different so you can visually identify whether the number reflects the total or the number of unread.  Unfortunately, there’s no way to identify those folders with no number-they could be either. The folders might be empty or they might have no unread messages.

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