Outlook Express Rules

After you have set up the folders and started enjoying the tidiness of your account. It does get a bit tedious, taking the mails out of the inbox and then sorting them out and then depositing them in their respective folders. Outlook Express has a function that can automate this for you. Click on Tools > Message Rules > Mail.  In the window that opens up click on New. Now what has to be done is a bit of programming. Yes! programming, but don't worry you do not have to write code or anything, Outlook Express contains all the necessary codes, all you have to do is provide the necessary parameters. What we are going to do here is define the situations (When) and the actions to be taken when these situations take place (Then).

A check in one or more of the boxes in the 1st box sets up the conditions that have to apply for the actions mentioned in the 2. box to take place. The statements in themselves are pretty self explaining. As soon as you check a box, the commands appear in the 3rd box. For example, I want to sort my incoming mail according to my different accounts. I check the box Where the message is from a specified account and then, I check the option Move it to the specified folder in the second box. This results in the code

Apply this rule after the message arrives
Where the message is from the specified account 
Move it to the specified folder.

With a click on the first specified I define the account name and with a click on the second one the folder.

You can also set up multiple conditions that a message needs to conform to before a certain action is carried out. For example, the data from the feedback forms on my business website is sent to me via email. I always like to send a quick mail back acknowledging receipt. The subject of these mails is always Feedback - Form name. To make sure that all these land in the right folder, I define the rule

Apply this rule after the message arrives
Where the Subject line contains specific words
and Where the message is from the specified account
Move it to the specified folder
and Reply with message

Under specific words I type in Feedback - Form name and specify the account name and folder. Then I select a confirmation message I have already saved as reply message.

By clicking on the and in the 3 rd box you can change it to an or. Which is particularly useful when you have multiple criteria selected. You can decide if the action is taken should any one of the criteria be fulfilled or only if all the criteria are fulfilled.

One last word to rules - the order in which they appear in the Message Rules window is the order the rules are carried out in. If an earlier rule has already applied to one message, a later rule may not apply.