Creating Rules to Manage Email in Outlook
One of Outlook's best features is the capability to create and manage
rules on how your email is handled. These rules can can allow you to work
with your email in any way that you like.
For example when you receive a message you can handle it based on criteria
such as subject, sender, your name in the CC list.
- Move messages to another folder
- Delete messages
- Mark messages - flags, colors, fonts etc.
- Play a sound
- Print the message
- Forward message
Creating the rules are quite simple, as Microsoft have provided a
wizard to do it for and some templates to get you started.
Basic Rule Creation
With Outlook 2000 and later, you can create a basic move/copy rules and
coloring rules (where a message is colored differently) from the main
screen.
Screenshots from Outlook XP - similar to other versions.
- If you are creating a rules to move messages to another folder, make
sure that you have created the folder before you start to create the
rule using File, New, Folder.
- Find the message that you want to base the rule on in Outlook and
select it so that it is highlighted.
- Click on the Organize button. You will find this on the top taskbar
- it is a yellow button made up of lots of squares, or in the Tools
menu.
In Outlook 2003 it has been removed from the top taskbar in the
default view - you will find it in the Tools menu.
- You can now create the rule to move or by selecting "Using Colors"
colorize the messages.
- Furthermore, by clicking on "Automatic Formatting" when in
the "Using Colors" option, you can change how certain
messages appear, including color and font.
Advanced Rule Creation
Using the "Rules Wizard" you can create quite sophisticated
rules for handling the messages. You can also refine any rules you have
already created and see how modifying the rules slightly can increase the
performance of Outlook.
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