Take Control Of Your Inbox With Microsoft Outlook’s Rules Wizard

How much time do you spend on Monday morning, or after coming back from vacation, sifting through countless emails in your inbox? Most of your inbox can be sorted into one of three categories:

Important-The Monday afternoon meeting has been moved back from 2:00 PM to 10:00 AM and has now become the Monday morning meeting; you’re still picking the sand out of your ears from your most recent trip to the Bahamas, Uh Oh!

Of interest, but no time-Might be better to sift through all those newsletters and webinar invitations during lunch or with a hot cappuccino and flaky croissant in hand when things slow down.

Not Again, Delete-No need to read the useless and annoying emails that are an unfortunate end result of a happy Reply to All trigger finger. Every office has an offender. That same offender also likes to send forwarded emails that he/she thought you might find funny.

If this sounds a little bit like what’s going on in your inbox then listen up, because the Microsoft Outlook Rules Wizard can help simplify your inbox and help you get a handle on your email.

Outlook Rules Wizard is an easy to use feature that allows you to create rules that will help you better manage your inbox. The rules wizard acts very similar to air traffic control directing airplanes to land by telling emails where to go based on certain specifications or rules.

The Rules wizard divides rules into two categories: notification and organization. Notification rules can be created to alert you when certain types of messages are sent to your inbox. For instance, flag each meeting request or update you receive from your manager. Organizational rules can be created to perform specific actions on a message when it is received. For instance, move all emails from the company comedian with the subject “Thought you might find this funny” to a specific folder.

Here’s an example of how the rules wizard works:

In Outlook, start by selecting Tools, Rules and Alerts

The first screen asks which type of rule you want. Choose New Rule

(For this example let’s move messages from a specified individual to a particular folder and Click Next)

The next dialog box asks what you want to do with the messages. Click Move to the Specified Folder, and choose the folder by clicking on the highlighted text in the Rule Description box. Click Next.

You are next asked to specify the conditions or rules you would like to apply. Check the box from people or distribution list. In the Rule Description box, click on the highlighted text, and choose which people Outlook should look for. Your contact list will be opened and you can select the desired contact

Finally, you’ll need to name your new rule. Choose a name, and then click Finish

Although moving an email from a specified sender to a specific folder is one of the more simple functions the Rules Wizard can perform, the tool is very powerful and can be used to create the most elaborate notifications, alerts, flags, and priorities for many of your incoming emails. It is easy to organize your inbox by creating rules that can specify Outlook to move certain email messages with specific words in the subject or automatically forward specific emails to a certain individual in your Outlook contacts.

The Rules Wizard can certainly be your answer for the most disorganized inboxes, but it can not save you from unwanted spam. That is a job for your spam filter as Rules Wizard only works with messages that have been downloaded from your server. There is also a limit to how many rules you can create. Outlook generally allows rules to utilize 32k of space which roughly equates to about 40 rules depending how complicated they can be. Once you learn how to harness its power, the Rules Wizard can certainly make your life a bit easier.

For more information about this article please contact Doug Ziewacz.

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