No, I do not work on the outlook team despite what my blog seems to indicate of late...

A reader sent me a workaround for the problem I brought up last week.  How can you "hand off" an e-mail thread?

  1. Click reply to the thread you want off of.
  2. Add the names/alias of the people who should own the reply to the To: line
  3. Copy those names
  4. Click the "options" button on the standard toolbar
  5. Under "Delivery Options" check "have replies sent to:"
  6. Paste those names into the "have replies sent to" field
  7. Close the options and send away

This seems to work in test conditions and I'll be trying it in practice soon.  I'll bet a VSTO add-in could do this with one button with a little effort. Enjoy!