Bug 508675

Summary:	[Akonadi EWS] Support for Outlook categories (color labels)
Product:	[Frameworks and Libraries] Akonadi	Reporter:	dino <dino.moser>
Component:	EWS Resource	Assignee:	kdepim bugs <kdepim-bugs>
Status:	REPORTED ---
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	carl, krissn, winter
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	6.5.0
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	CachyOS
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description dino 2025-08-24 15:20:56 UTC

Description:
Currently Akonadi-EWS is able to synchronize mail, folders, contacts, calendars, and tasks, but it does not synchronize Outlook categories (color labels assigned to messages, contacts, events).
Outlook categories are widely used in enterprise environments to classify and highlight messages, so their absence is a significant limitation when using KMail with an Exchange/Outlook account.

Steps to reproduce:

In Outlook (desktop or web), assign a category (with a color) to a message.

Synchronize the same account in KMail using Akonadi-EWS.

The message is received, but the category is missing.

Expected result:
KMail should display the category (or map it to a local tag) so that users can see the same color-coding/labels as in Outlook.

Actual result:
Categories are not synchronized or displayed.

Additional information / Proposal:

Categories are stored in MAPI, but Exchange also exposes them via EWS item properties (Categories property).

It would be useful to map Outlook categories to Akonadi tags or labels.

Even partial support (read-only) would already be valuable.

If full category synchronization is complex, a first step could be mapping only the category names as text tags, without colors.