Workaround for no feature to sort custom formula fields?

[CB]

I am using Outlook 2007

I receive large volumes of email that are much easier to manage if I parse
the information in the subject line into several new fields.

These messages are of a well known fixed format that get filtered via a rule
into a subfolder. I do not have control over the messages that are sent

I have created three custom fields using text formulas which I display in
place of the subject field in that Outlook folder.

After congratulating myself for transforming the emails into something
manageable , I come to find out I can not sort on these new custom fields,
which limits the usefulness of my new scheme.

Is there a workaround for this limitation? Can I create custom TEXT and/or
NUMERIC fields that I populate from my custom fields to sort on? If such a
scheme is possible, I'd want to be able to populate those fields by running
some piece of code (i.e, I dont want to manually enter the fields for every
email). It would also be perfectly acceptable if the sortable fields were
only loaded when I explicitly ran some command (i.e., The fields would not
need to be populated as new emails are received)

Or is there any other workaround that people are aware of that could help me
out?

I am not familiar with forms. but since it looks like that would need
implemented bty the sender (based on my few minutes of research), it seems
that is not an option.

Thanks in advance

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP]]

Yes, you can add custom fields to items, using the
MailItem.UserProperties.Add method and run VBA code to populate them, even
write an event handler to do the parsing and field updating automatically. If
you're just getting started in Outlook VBA, this page might be helpful:
http://outlookcode.com/article.aspx?id=49

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP]]

Yes, that's possible with VBA. If you're just getting started in code, you
might want to begin with the info at
http://www.outlookcode.com/article.aspx?ID=40