How to filter inbox based on current message's subject or sender in Outlook?

MS Outlook for Mac: 16.50

I've recently switched from Thunderbird to Outlook due to corporate mandate, and it's mostly gone well. The most important capability I had with Thunderbird is the one thing that's missing on Outlook, the ability to filter the current mailbox based on the currently highlighted email message. I did this in Thunderbird via a plug-in called Nostalgy, which is mainly used for storing messages but also had this great little capability: with a message selected, I can hit a key combo and filter the current mailbox by the subject, hit it again and filter by the sender, instead, and hit is again to clear it (I may have the order incorrect, but you get the idea). I get hundreds of emails a day, and it really helped me to manage it all.

Does anything like this exist for Outlook? I'm willing to shell out $$ for a plugin, if necessary. I can do it via built-in capabilities, but it requires using the mouse and typing a lot -- a far cry from hitting a single key.

Thanks!

2 Answers

You can do 1 of those, and almost the other, but that might be enough for your purposes.

Right click any message in any folder and choose "Find related", then in the sub-menu there, choose "Messages from Sender". Depending on your settings, this might result in finding all emails from that person in any folder of the mailbox. This might be what you want, but if you want to narrow the scope to the current folder or folder and subfolders, those options appear on the Search ribbon that should appear while you are in search mode.

Notice that this is explicitly a search for emails "from" that sender, not to them or copied to them when sent to you, etc.

As to the subject, you can already turn on "conversation view": View ribbon > select the checkbox "Show as conversations". And in Conversation Settings (right below that checkbox) you can choose to include emails only from this folder or from other folders as well (most obviously from Inbox and Sent items for example).

You can also right click > Find related > "Messages in this conversation" (regardless of whether you are using conversation view). This is not strictly the same as searching by subject line, as it depends on not just the subject but the parties to the email being similar. But for most purposes it shoudl do the job.

However, in my experience, Outlook seems to err on the side of caution and things which are to or from the same person, with identical subjects (ignoring Re: Fw: etc) will tend to be lumped together as a conversation. This means you are more likely to find what you want than not to, but it can mean two separate "conversations" about a similar topic ("Monthly report") become intertwangled and hard to separate out.

So yes, a couple of mouse clicks, but no actual typing or codifying a search such as subject:"thing I want to find".

You can of course refine search results by categories, for emails with attachments etc. with just a click or two on the Search ribbon.

You need to use Advanced Find Box (you may need to add it to the ribbon):

1. put your search words in "Search for the word(s)" box
2. select appropriate "In" item (subject only or subject and body)
3. in field "From" put the needed Sender name
4. click "Find Now"

Source:

EDIT: Second option is to use named filters in standard Search Box:

from:"bobby moore" subject:"your topic"

or

from: subject:"your topic"