January 20, 2023 I am an outlook user. A heavy outlook user. ANd there is something that is bothering me. The [External Tag in front of every message I get from an external email address (which is almost all my email)
Don’t get me wrong. I understand it. There is so much phishing and spoofing going on that is a nice visual reminder that you should be careful. But how this goes, if every email has this tag…You do not pay enough attention anyways and it is just screen clutter.
So I started looking for a solution. The company wide solution would be, shut this thing down, invest in security awareness training and do red/blue teaming to really train people in behavior. But that is a long term plan. I found this little workaround instead 🙂
- Right click on the “From” header at top of emails. Then “Field Chooser”
- Then “New”, change the “Type” field to “Formula”, give the new field a name (e.g. FromNoTag). Enter, [From] ,in the Formula box.
- Click OK. After clicking OK, left-click and hold the “FromNoTag” line and drag it up to your column heading area between “From” and “Subject” and release.
- Once you see it as a new column, then left-click on the original “From” column heading and drag it down into your mailbox until you see a large black X appear, then release your left-click and it will go away.
- Now, click and drag the original From field off the email list. The EXTERNAL Label is tied to that field, and by removing the ‘real’ From field it will take away the label.
Only use if you really promise to be careful opening emails!