I didn't realise you had the patch installed. It's caused no end of problems for most WLM users. Microsoft should be ashamed of themselves. Pleased you've got it fixed.

The Conversations option is only available when sorting by Date. Click the Sort by button to change the setting.

Good luck.

Also, if you are using Windows 10 try this:

On the Microsoft Forums, users have posted several solutions. One is to run the application in Windows 8 compatibility mode. This can be done by...

For your 'sent items' problem try clicking on 'conversations' in your 'view' tab and make sure it is off.

The coding. The font kept changing after I uninstalled the Microsoft patch. I discovered running the repair from the exe file worked.

I recently had the same problem and this worked for me:

1. In the folder pane, locate C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Installer there is a repair utility.
2. Run wlarp.exe file.
3. Click Repair...