re: Microsoft Outlook

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I gave him a solution and here is how you add the macro to Outlook:

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Unless the macro can run automatically on messages as they arrive, that's not a solution I would propose to someone who's goal is to "quickly find and sort email by subject while in a meeting".

But it is pretty interesting and useful for general mailbox maintenance and organization.

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What was your solution again to strip out the word external from the subject field?

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Your solution is perfect for stripping words from the subject. I just don't think it's a practical solution for what he's trying to achieve.

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Well, it was pretty dumb of you to ask if a network engineer sucks at his job, just bc he won't provide an outlook client solution to someone who is trying subvert their IT departments security measures.

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Was it, depends on your outlook. I’ve always worked as a consultant and finding the right people to answer a question when you can’t is part of doing your job well If a guy feels the need to chime in he should provide some constructive input, though perhaps I was was somewhat harsh in my response. That was uncalled for.

Also, the OP was absolutely not trying to subvert IT sercurity measures, just asking for a solution that would allow him to use his application in the same manner he did prior to the new measures being implemented. He was asking if a work around was possible. Side note, the [external] solution has only been moderately effective against phishing attempts because people are, well, less than diligent in their observations.

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are you guys so compartmentalized

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that's the logical conclusion you came to? Yikes. See above.

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Did you read the entire statement? You will see the answer to your question if you do. It is not yes.

ETA: definately want to apologize for any suggestion you are not good at your job, totally uncalled for. Chalk it up to a bad day on my part.

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What’s he trying to achieve?

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Apparently there are times where he's in a meeting and needs to quickly be able to search back through email threads that are 40-50 emails long. His current process is to do a quick search based on a few known terms, find the email thread he's looking for and then sort the folder he's in by subject to view all the emails in that thread. But since external emails are tagged with "External" are separate from the internal emails.

I'm not sure why, instead of sorting by subject, he can't just search "subject:'subject of email'". I'm on 2016, and this is very fast and efficient. Much more so than sorting by subject, which only shows messages in that particular folder or search result.

We have a machine with 2013 on it, so I was going to test search on that later, but I don't remember any difference in search efficiency between the two.

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How so? We've been on 2016 for a couple of years now and I don't recall any difference between 2016 and 2013 with regard to how external email looks to users.

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it's a back-end thing - for instance, a large majority of emails my organization deals with are managed by gmail - even though we do not put gmail in the name of it, and internally the emails look like they come from our exchange server, they are actually m. accounts.

One instance: if you run a filter on one of these "external" emails - 2016 will not retroactively pull the emails that are already in your inbox, into wherever you want it to... even if you check the "do this for all items already in the inbox" box. It sounds like he's got hundreds of emails already that he needs to start doing this to NOW, instead of waiting any longer... if he waits until they upgrade to 2016, he could easily run into issues very similarly.

The reason I say this, is I've been working in IT for 8+ years now, and have never run across the issue the OP is talking about - so until he's running 2016 and test out his little "trick" nobody can really know for sure if it's going to work - and for all we know it could get worse. So he really needs to start looking for an QoL fix to his issue ASAP (something that will do what he wants, but in a different way, probably more efficient and reliable), or he might completely miss the train that would allow him to do it.

My fix for his issue would be to start grouping all of his important conversations in folders within Outlook using a filter for the Subject... but I'm not sure the OP is ready to try something new either.

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it's a back-end thing - for instance, a large majority of emails my organization deals with are managed by gmail - even though we do not put gmail in the name of it, and internally the emails look like they come from our exchange server, they are actually m. accounts.

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You lost me. He's not talking about external email from an external mailbox, like GMail. He's talking about his IT department implementing a policy that just adds the word "EXTERNAL" to the beginning of every subject line that he receives from people outside of his organization. All of the messages are still in his Exchange mailbox. This is strictly an anti-spam, anti-phishing, anti-virus measure that makes the end-user aware that the email is not from someone in the organization (which makes it less trust-worthy).

It sounds like you're talking about a unified inbox which displays emails from multiple mailboxes which would not be relevant for this issue.

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keep insulting IT professionals while asking for help on the Tech sub-forum.

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I don't think he really wants help. I think he was looking for people to agree with his idea that it's a problematic policy and snap their fingers to magically produce a solution that lets him "do what he's always done" instead of working with anyone to find an alternative solution.

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not in the least. what bothers me is how few people these days can actually read all the details in a question with out jumping to their own pissy conclusions because their comparing me to someone that pissed them off in their own life.
I've never said there's anything wrong with the policy and never once said i want to remove [external] from the subject but IT/network/computer douches come in here immediately saying stuff like:
"you're the person that gives the company viruses, im saving you from yourself by telling you to let it be"
or
"I think he was looking for people to agree with his idea that it's a problematic policy and snap their fingers to magically produce a solution that lets him "do what he's always done"

I am actually looking for help in coming up with a way to avoid changing this policy because i agree, it's necessary, idiots in our company keep clicking phishing emails. I'm simply looking for a way to maintain the functionality of the sort function as it was before this policy kicked in to get the best of both worlds without creating a drop in email productivity. Nothing I'VE said support your narrative. Douche.

And i've seen the solutions others have posed and am working on vetting them.

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My fix for his issue would be to start grouping all of his important conversations in folders within Outlook using a filter for the Subject... but I'm not sure the OP is ready to try something new either.

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i group all projects by folder, in them there are subfolders by category(materials, PM, engineering issues, procurement issues etc.), even in those subfolders there are 10-15 conversations going on at one time. my folder tree is rather expansive. i guess i could start breaking down into sub-sub-sub folders but at some point it starts to get a little ridiculous. if you saw my outlook, you'd agree. that's part of the reason i keep outstanding/open conversations, that still need resolution, in the inbox(where i used to be able to sort by subject, effectively)is so i know what's still outstanding.

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but I'm not sure the OP is ready to try something new either.

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I'm more than willing to try something new, if it makes sense... or if it's the last/only option.

People are too quick to assume "OP", or anyone that they are helping", is stubborn/stupid/lazy. Usually that might be that case but it doesn't help to start with that assumption off-the-bat.

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Unless the macro can run automatically on messages as they arrive, that's not a solution I would propose to someone who's goal is to "quickly find and sort email by subject while in a meeting".

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You can run Outlook macro's based on when a reminder or appointment task fires I think (at least you used to be able to). Essentially it is kind of like jerry rigging a timer and scheduling feature in Outlook....it's not elegant but it works.

ETA It's a lot of macro code too because the right way to do it is to do a starup macro that creates the task, then check to make sure you fire the other macor on the correct task, then delete the task that just fired, and then recreate the next task...little VB code heavy.

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Too many people in IT don't attempt to understand how users work

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Which is why I stepped away from this thread.