Why can't Outlook users edit the subject line of incoming emails?

Anonymous

* * Moderator note on 11/21/2024 * *

If running Classic Outlook/Legacy Outlook/Desktop Outlook, please see this article.

Edit an email subject line https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/edit-an-email-subject-line-08d60328-2a27-473e-8227-0b42a1ff2ce6

Hello,

Ever since the "New Outlook" was released, MSoft has been pushing for all users move to this new version. When I first tried it, I noticed that the New Outlook would not allow me to edit the subject line for any incoming emails. Therefore, I DID NOT switch over. Today I realized that even in the legacy Outlook, this feature is no longer available. MSoft makes us believe it's available, but after about a minute or so, the edits just vanish.

Our workflow requires internal project numbers be assigned to certain emails. MSoft removing this option is a huge problem for us. I'm 100% confident I'm not the only one facing this problem. Needless to say, this is frustrating. The tool that is supposed to make us more productive is actually creating serious problems in our workflow.

What is going on?

In gratitude,

Joe Silva

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55 answers

Anonymous

2024-11-21T19:03:35+00:00

This information did not help. Neither of your recommendations appear to work at all for what we need.
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Anonymous

2024-11-21T18:58:16+00:00

It's not only the inability to edit the Subject line which is important to me, but I like to often edit the entire email body in order to make notes within. In the prior Outlook version, editing the email body was an option which we can no longer do.

Very frustrating.
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Anonymous

2024-11-20T18:36:18+00:00

This is incredibly disappointing. I've just upgraded to the latest Outlook version, having realized that I can no longer edit the email Subject Line. This is also negatively impacting our team our workflows. We can no longer quickly assign case #s to our emails for quick routing. Flagging, and using the email body are not reasonable solutions to manage incoming cases for over 14k employees. Please reconsider adding the Subject Line editing capability back to newer Outlook versions.

Thank you.

CO_Healthcare
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Anonymous

2024-11-19T15:54:41+00:00

I am also very very upset that the "new" outlook took away the changing of the subject line in incoming emails. This feature is required to be able to search for PO's in my workday. You can't control what others put in the subject/body of their emails and we relied on this feature.
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Anonymous

2024-11-18T15:25:53+00:00

Although I appreciate the reply, there will be so many people who will be unhappy with this choice.

I will not switch over to the new outlook ever if I have a choice.

My comment was *not at all* intended as a solution. I always used the possibility to edit subject lines extensively. Also manually and by scripting / development.

I just wanted to mention that in some Microsoft products

"the subject line is now considered a part of the message body and cannot be edited separately"

and in other parts of the Microsoft planet people build functions to bulk edit subject lines rule based.

By the way:

Here does Microsoft explain how to edit an email subject line and informs that this documentation applies to

Outlook for Microsoft 365, Outlook 2024, Outlook 2021, Outlook 2019, Outlook 2016, Outlook 2013

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/edit-an-email-subject-line-08d60328-2a27-473e-8227-0b42a1ff2ce6
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