How to search external emails (not from internal domain) in Outlook?

Author Kelly Last modified 2024-09-02

In Outlook daily working, it’s common to receive emails from your internal company and emails from external domains. In some cases, you may want to find out all external emails, or distinguish all external emails and internal ones in Outlook. But how? Try below workarounds:

Search external emails (not from internal domain) within POP email account
Search external/internal emails within Exchange account

Search external emails (not from internal domain) within POP email account

If you need to find out all external emails which are not from internal domain within POP email account in Outlook, please do as follows:

1. Shift to the Mail view, and open the specified mail folder where you want to search external emails.

2. Place the cursor into the Instant Search box, and then click Search > From.

And now the search criteria from:”Sender Name” has been inserted into the Instant Search box. See screenshot:

the step 1 of searching external emails (not from internal domain) within POP email account

3. In the Instant Search box, please replace Sender Name with your internal domain, such as @extendoffice.com, and then add NOT before your internal domain.

Now the search criteria from:”Sender Name” is changed to from: NOT”@extendoffice.com”. See screenshot:

So far all external emails have been found and listed in the mail list already.

One click to find emails by selected email's sender or sender domain in Outlook

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Search external/internal emails within Exchange account

If you need to find out all external emails within Exchange account in Outlook, there seems no good ways to solve it. However, I will introduce a trick to distinguish external emails and internal emails in Exchange account’s mail folders.

1. Shift to the Mail view, open the specified mail folder of Exchange account you will distinguish external emails and internal ones, and then click View > View Settings.

the step 1 of searching external/internal emails within Exchange account

2. In the opening Advanced View Settings dialog box, please click the Conditional Formatting button.

the step 2 of searching external/internal emails within Exchange account

3. Now you get into the Conditional Formatting dialog box, please click the Add button, next type a name as you need into the Name box, and then click the Condition button. See screenshot:

the step 3 of searching external/internal emails within Exchange account

4. In the new opening Filter dialog box, please type /O= into the From box on the Message tab, and then click the OK button.

the step 41 of searching external/internal emails within Exchange account

5. And now you return to the Conditional Formatting dialog box, please click the Font button to open the Font dialog box, next customize the font formatting as you need in the Font dialog box, and click the OK button. See screenshot:

the step 5 of searching external/internal emails within Exchange account

6. Click OK > OK to save settings and close dialog boxes.

And now in the specified mail folder, all emails with the customizing formatting are internal, while emails in normal font are external. See screenshot: