Mystery apparently solved...or not. My company switched to Microsoft Office 365 - the online version of Outlook - and then downloads the mail to the Desktop version of Outlook. Apparently the old functionality of Desktop Outlook isn't there with Office 365. The features stopped working with the mail server switch.

I have no idea why that is - once mail is in Outlook, you would think Outlook would know what to do with it, right? I mean, the source of email has nothing whatsoever to do with the functionality of a desktop application. (???) Unless my logic is skewed. For example, it also doesn't work when you create Search Folders either - and these are already in the Inbox. The Search Folder shows the number of messages supposedly in the folder, but when you open the folder, nothing is there.

Anyway, the IT team is looking into it to see if there's a workaround. If anyone else ran across this and knows what to do, please advise. Thanks