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

Dear Joe Silva1,

Good day.

Thank you for posting to Microsoft Community.

We've received your query, and you can expect to receive response from one of our community moderators accordingly.

At this point, we appreciate your patience and cooperation. Thank you.

Dear Joe Silva1,

Good morning! Thanks for posting in the Microsoft Community. We are happy to help you.

Based on your description, I understand your frustration with the inability to edit the subject line in Outlook. I'm sorry to hear that this feature is causing problems in your workflow.

Regarding the issue you are experiencing, Microsoft has made some changes to the way the subject line is handled in Outlook. In the latest versions of Outlook, including the New Outlook, the subject line is now considered a part of the message body and cannot be edited separately.

However, there are still ways to add project numbers or other information to your emails. One option is to use the categories feature in Outlook to label your emails with specific project numbers. Another option is to use the message body or the email's flagging feature to add project numbers or other information.

I hope this information helps. If you have any further questions or concerns, please let me know.

As Joe stated above, this isn't just isolated to their company. This was an incredibly useful feature which helped maintain emails and processes, especially with regards to shared email boxes.

The categories option is not suitable when you are having to generate multiple numbers a day to assign to these emails. It would completely overwhelm that as an option making it unusable for anything else that you have categories for already.

For example project numbers or room bookings may not be generated until after the email has already been sent, so putting it into the body of the email isn't viable at all. Unless I reply to an email back to myself with it, then continue to do that while the whole process this is updated, which is just messy and that's how emails get mixed up, and important information in the email gets pushed down to the bottom.

With regards to the "Flagging" option can you elaborate on how I can add more information on a flagged email, and if it's unflagged say moved to completed/ticked, does that information disappear?

SORT OF FIX -

You can add in a category, and delete it from your manage categories option, and it will not remove this from the email unless you go into the email and remove it via the X when it appears at the top of the email body. So far this only works in shared boxes, if you do this for an email in your own inbox, it will come up with a warning and remove it from the email all together.

The only problem is, for users who haven't switched over, and are still using the old Outlook all of these categories will still appear for them in the category section. Which gets messy for them.

A sort of fix for people who use shared inbox and need to update emails with information, but a pain if you have people in your team who aren't willing to switch to the new Outlook.

I too and totally frustrated at not being able to edit the outlook subject line to more accurately reflect the content or to index my emails. I am sure tens of thousands of other users are frustrated as well. Change this please

Wayne M