How to change subject line in Outlook? [of received messages]

The subject line of an email is the first thing people will see when they receive an email, so making it as creative as you want is important. But how can you change the subject line of an email in Outlook?

The subject line always being the title of your whole email story, if you are drafting a book, or a blog post subject title tells the entire story about the content.

Microsoft Outlook emails consist of the Subject line, which represents the email message.

Edit subject line brings tons of questions to every reader, is editing possible? and if yes, why does anybody want to edit the subject line of your email message received in your Inbox?

In this article, we will lead you, not only to the steps tutorial (change subject line in Outlook) but the reason behind it.

Why Change Subject Line in Outlook?

Email management managing tons of email messages, filtering them according to their categories, and putting them in different folders, in a professional manner.

When you received your email message in your inbox, the sender subject line description designed by your sender somehow doesn’t align with your email management.

Keeping that specific email in your selected folder required some protocol or some similarity to match the rules or conditional formatting.

For the sake of easy searching, being consistent with the message content, or other purposes, you may need to edit or change some received message subjects in Outlook.

Outlook allows the user to change/modify the subject tag line easily.

Let’s find out How? 

How to edit the subject line in Outlook 365

It is not mandatory to revise the subject line, Although the subject field doesn’t look editable, if it meets the rule/customized category, here is the step-by-step tutorial to edit the subject line.

  • Lunch Outlook >> Open your message list.
  • Select your specific email, double click & open that email message in a message window.
edit the subject line in Outlook 365
  • You can click in the subject area and start typing, edit your subject line directly, and then click the Save button top left corner or use the shortcut key (Ctrl + S).
Change the subject line of a message
  • Your customized message subject line is saved in your inbox, in case any Outlook rules are floating for the subject line, that email hit that rule and complies.

Changing Subject Line in Outlook for Multiple Email

The above method is a meaningful change, easily operatable, the only problem above method applicable to a single email message. What if you like to Edit the Subject Line of Multiple Emails in Outlook?

Here is the step-by-step tutorial:

This method after a few simple adjustments allows you to edit the subject line of multiple emails without opening them (Directly).

  • Open the folder >> Go to View Tab >> Select View Settings
view settings outlook
  • Advanced View Settings window dialog box appears >> Click to other settings.
How to Edit the Subject of a Message
  • Other Settings dialog box appears >> Select Allow in-cell editing option and hit Ok.
edit subject line in outlook

Usually by default Outlook does not allow its user to edit the subject directly from the folder, after checking this option you can easily change the subject line directly.

You can simply skip the opening of the email message separately; it is helpful for multiple modifications.

Now if you click about an email, you can edit it and then hit return to save your changes. You can also reverse this future back to default.

After these options, you can change the subject line one by one according to your requirement and hit (Ctrl + S) to save. Your new subject will show in the reading pane.

Change the Subject of an Incoming Message

Outlook Rule to change Subject Line

Creating a rule that automatically transfers targeted emails into the desired folder and changes the subject line in the folder using a VBA Script.

VBA always seems complicated, I strongly recommended to skip this approach.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the subject line is the first thing people see when they receive an email, so it’s important it conveys the right information. For keeping a record of emails, it is important to learn the method of changing the subject line in Outlook of email received in your inbox.

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Amit Bansal

My Name is Amit Bansal, and I am the founder of "Mail Smartly", With a track record of penning in-depth blogs and producing informative YouTube videos, for a deeper dive into solutions and tutorials, visit my YouTube Channel

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