Using Outlook's Rules Wizard and Assistants

Windows IT Pro

- Advertise

Using Outlook's Rules Wizard and Assistants
View the book table of contents

Author:	Sue Mosher
Published:	January 1998
Copyright:	1998
Publisher:	29th Street Press

Abstract
In this chapter, you will learn how to use the Rules Wizard, one of the most powerful and versatile features of Outlook.

One of the most powerful and versatile features of Outlook consists of a set of tools that automatically process incoming messages based on rules and actions that you designate. The Rules Wizard lets you construct rules that sort messages into different types — those from your boss, high-importance messages, junk mail, and so on — and move them to different folders, send automatic responses, or perform other actions.

One of the beauties of these tools is that if you connect to Microsoft Exchange Server, they keep working, even when you’ve gone home. The Exchange server itself processes most rules. If you previously used Inbox Assistant rules with Microsoft Exchange Server, those rules can be converted to the Rules Wizard’s format and automatically updated on the server. As an Exchange Server user, you can also employ the Out of Office Assistant to handle messages when you’re on vacation or not checking your mail for a few days.

If you don’t use Exchange Server, the Rules Wizard works only when you are actually running Outlook, but it works on incoming messages from any source — and even on outgoing messages.

INSTALLING THE RULES WIZARD

The Rules Wizard was released after the initial version of Outlook. Look for it on the Tools menu. If your version of Outlook does not include the Rules Wizard, you need to download and run Ruleswiz.exe from Microsoft. Choose Help, Microsoft on the Web, Free Stuff to locate the Rules Wizard.

After you’ve installed the Rules Wizard, you can restart Outlook and begin using it. If you were previously using Inbox Assistant to process messages with Exchange Server, the Rules Wizard offers to convert your rules. See “Converting Inbox Assistant Rules” later in this chapter.

BUILDING RULES

The “wizard” part of the Rules Wizard is so named because of the way the tool helps you build rules without any special syntax. You build rules by selecting check boxes, picking from lists, and typing in words and phrases that you want to look for. You can also take any message and use it as a model for building a rule. Rules can be constructed to react to either incoming and outgoing messages.

Special Note: Outlook does not allow you to apply rules to a folder on demand. Rules are applied only to incoming and outgoing messages as they are received and sent.

The process of building a rule involves two required and one optional step:

set the conditions that messages must meet for the rule to be applied
set the actions you want applied to messages that match the conditions
set any exceptions to the conditions (optional)

Below, we cover how to build a rule based on a sample, how to use the built-in templates for the most common sorts of rules, and how to build a rule from scratch.

Building a Rule by Example
The easiest way to build a rule is to start with a message similar to the messages you want to capture with your rule. For example, Figure 17.1 shows a message from a Web site that you often order merchandise from. You’d like to keep their confirmations in a separate folder called Orders. Let’s assume that you’ve already created the Orders folder, following the steps under “Creating a Folder” in Chapter 9.

To use a message as the starting point for a rule,

Open the message, then choose Tools, Create Rule. In the Rules Wizard dialog box (Figure 17.2), the most likely conditions for the rule are at the top of the list, with specifics from this particular message already filled in.
Under “Which condition(s) do you want to check?” select one or more conditions that should be matched in other incoming messages. When you select a condition, it is added to the “Rule description” box at the bottom of the Rules Wizard dialog box. If the condition contains underlined text, you can click on the underlined text in the “Rule description” box to change it. In Figure 17.3, we’ve chosen to look for particular text in the subject of incoming messages and have edited it to look for just “order number.”
You can set as many conditions as you like. If you choose more than one, then the rule will be applied only when the message meets all conditions. When you finish setting conditions, click Next.
In the next screen in the Rules Wizard (Figure 17.4), choose one or more actions that you want to be applied to the message. Table 17.1 lists your choices.
When you’ve selected all the actions you want to apply to this message, you can click Finish. If you see a message such as that in Figure 17.5, click OK. (See “Working with Server Actions” later in this chapter for more information about client-only rules.)

Special Note: Custom actions are not included with the Rules Wizard. They are additional actions, such as printing a message, installed in the form of a .dll file on your computer. See “Understanding Custom Actions” later in this chapter.

The preceding example created a rule that looks for the phrase “order number” in the subject of an incoming message and moves any “order number” message to the Orders folder. The Rules Wizard automatically gives this rule the name “order number” and makes it an active rule, at the top of the rules list (see “Considering Rule Order” later in this chapter).

Instead of clicking Finish in step 6 above, we could have clicked Next to walk through the last two screens of the Rules Wizard, where you set exceptions and give the rule a name. We do that under “Building a Rule Step-by-Step” below. But for most rules, you can skip those screens and finish the rule after selecting the conditions and actions.

Building a Rule with Templates
Creating a rule from an existing message is one quick method. Another is to use one of the built-in templates for the most commonly used rules. With this technique, you select a rule type, then fill in the specifics of the conditions right on the first Rules Wizard screen.

From the main Outlook menu, choose Tools, Rules Wizard, then click New to see the rule templates, which are listed under “Which type of rule do you want to create?” (see Figure 17.6).

Table 17.2 provides details about what each of these templates is designed to accomplish and whether it works for incoming or outgoing messages. The underlined values must be filled in for the rule to be complete.

Note that “Build as I go” is not really a template, but a type of rule you can choose when there isn’t a template that fits or when you want to go through all the screens of the Rules Wizard to make your selections.

Let’s look at an example of a rule created with a template. Figure 17.6 shows the Rules Wizard after we’ve chosen to create a rule that will “Move messages based on content.”

To complete the rule, all you need to do is click on the underlined terms in the “Rule description” box and fill in the values you want to use in this rule. When you click “specific words” in “with specific words in the subject or body,” you can fill in any single word phrase that you want to search for. When you click “specified” in “move it to the specified folder,” you see a list of Outlook folders to choose from.

When you’ve entered the required values in the underlined areas, click Finish. Outlook names the rule automatically (in this case, using the value you entered for “with specific words in subject or body”) and makes this new rule the first one that will be applied.

Building a Rule Step-by-Step
Here we look at rules for outgoing messages and the Rules Wizard screens we didn’t use in the first two examples.

Let’s give the Rules Wizard a final spin by using the “Build as I go” type. Our goal is to take every message sent with an Importance of High, mark it with a Follow-up message flag, and save a copy in a folder called Priority.

If you want to follow along in Outlook, first create the Priority folder following the steps under “Creating a Folder” in Chapter 9, so your flagged messages have a place to be stored.

Now, let’s go to work:

Click Tools, Rules Wizard to display the Rules Wizard dialog box (Figure 17.7). (Notice that the “order number” rule we created under “Building a Rule by Example” is already in the list.) Click New.
In the next screen, under “When do you want to apply the rule?” choose “When I send a message.” This automatically selects “Build as I go” under “Which type of rule do you want to create?” Click Next to continue.
In the next screen (Figure 17.8), under “Which condition(s) do you want to check?” select at least one condition. For our example, we choose “marked as (importance).” Remember that if you choose more than one condition, all conditions must be met for the rule to fire.
For each condition set in step 3, click on the underlined value in the “Rule description” box and enter the specifics of the condition. In some cases, you type in specific text; in others, you pick from the Address Book or from a list of choices for a certain field. In our example, we click “(importance)” and select High from the choices available. Click Next to continue.
In the next screen (see Figure 17.4), under “What do you want to do to the message?” select one or more actions; then, as you did in step 4, click the underlined value in the “Rule description” box and enter the specifics of the action. Figure 17.9 shows that the rule so far includes both a condition (high importance) and two actions (flag and move a copy). Table 17.3 lists the actions available for messages that you send. Click Next when you finish adding actions.
In the next screen, shown in Figure 17.10, under “Add any exceptions,” select conditions under which you do not want the rule to be applied. The choices are similar to the conditions you saw in step 3. Click Next when you finish adding exceptions.
In the last screen of the wizard (Figure 17.11), you can change the name for the rule. Click Finish to add the rule to the top of the Rules Wizard list (see “Considering Rule Order” later in this chapter). Then click OK to close the Rules Wizard.

Now that you know how to apply all the Rules Wizard options with a step-by-step construction procedure, you may want to try some of the examples under “Tips and Tricks” at the end of this chapter.

HELPFUL HINTS FOR RULES

Let’s look at some of the finer points for making rules perform as you want them to.

Testing Conditions
The need to test rules can’t be overemphasized, especially when you start creating rules that automatically forward or reply to messages. No one enjoys receiving messages that were sent by a sloppy rule.

A good initial test — even before you build a rule — is to use a filter (see “Applying Filters” in Chapter 9) to determine how difficult it might be to isolate a particular type of message according to the addresses, subject, message text, or other characteristics that you can use for rule conditions.

Before you set up a forward or reply rule, run the conditions for the rule for at least several days with only a “move it to the specified folder” action. You can then look at the folder where you moved the messages and evaluate whether the conditions you set are working properly. Only when you are satisfied with the results should you add the forward or reply action, and even then, I recommend that you include a “notify me using a specific message” or “move it to the specified folder” action so you can monitor how well it works.

Searching for Multiple Phrases
In general, you cannot use the Rules Wizard to search for messages that contain any one of several search phrases (an “or” rule in Boolean syntax) the way you can with a filter. Instead, you need to create multiple rules, each searching for a different phrase.

For example, let’s say you want to search for all incoming messages containing the text “Rules Wizard” or “Microsoft Outlook” and move them to a folder named “Outlook.” First, create and test a rule that searches for “Rules Wizard.” Then make a copy of that rule and edit it to search for “Microsoft Outlook” instead.

Here’s how to make a copy of a rule and edit the search phrase in a condition:

Choose Tools, Rules Wizard.
In the Rules Wizard dialog box, select the rule you want to copy, then click Copy. This creates a new rule named “Copy of” plus the name of your original rule, and places this rule at the bottom of the list.
Click the check box next to the copied rule to make it active.
Click the underlined condition value in the “Rule description” box for the copied rule, and change it to the second search phrase you want to use.
Click Move Up to move the copied rule to just below the original rule.
Click Rename to rename the copied rule, if you like.
Click OK to save the copied rule.

One exception occurs when you want to search for messages either sent to or arriving from “people or distribution list.” In that case, you can pick multiple addresses from the Address Book. The rule will fire when a message includes any one of those addresses.

Special Note: If you connect to Microsoft Exchange Server, you can use the Inbox Assistant to create rules based on conditions with multiple phrases. See “Maintaining Two Sets of Rules” later in this chapter for details about how to use both the Inbox Assistant and the Rules Wizard.

Matching Addresses
The Rules Wizard offers several different conditions related to matching sender and recipient addresses, summarized in Table 17.4.

The “Sent directly to me” and “Sent only to me” choices may not work for all services installed in your profile. (For example, they don’t work for The Microsoft Network service.) You can test these conditions by sending yourself messages using all the different addresses that people can use to reach you, both through your internal mail system and from the Internet or various online services. If you find that some of your addresses don’t trigger the “Sent directly to me” condition, use “Sent to people or distribution list” instead. Enter all your possible addresses in the Address Book (the PAB is good for this, so you don’t clutter your Contacts folder) and use those for the rule.

When you use “Sent to people or distribution list” or “From people or distribution list,” you can select more than one address from the Address Book. This is extremely useful if, for example, you want to use one folder to gather all messages sent to or from your work team.

The two “With specific words in the ... address” choices are also quite powerful. These search the underlying e-mail address — not the display name — and can be used, for example, to match all the messages arriving from a particular Internet domain.

The three “Where my name is ...” choices are different from all the others in that they work with the display name, the name you see in the To or Cc field, rather than the underlying e-mail address. That makes them of limited use, though you might experiment with using them to filter out possible junk mail from people who are sending to your e-mail address without knowing your real name.

Considering Rule Order
The order in which rules are applied matters a great deal. Each incoming or outgoing message is matched against the rules in the order they are listed in the Rules Wizard dialog box (Figure 17.12). If the message meets the conditions, the associated action occurs. Then the item is compared to the conditions for the next rule.

If you do not connect to Microsoft Exchange Server, this process continues until either all the rules have been examined for a possible match or, in the case of an incoming message, a rule moves the item from the Inbox. If you do connect to an Exchange server, a message is compared against all rules until it either reaches the end of the rules list or matches a rule with a Delete action. This means that if you use Exchange Server and you want a particular rule to be the last one applied to a certain type of message, you must include “delete it” among the actions for that rule.

Page: 1, 2

ADS BY GOOGLE