Using Outlook’s Rules Wizard

Have you ever wanted to organize email you receive automatically, putting those emails in a specific folder based on subject, content, or who the email is from?  Outlook has a handy feature called the Rules Wizard that can do just that.  To learn how to use this tool, follow the instructions below. 

Create your Personal Folders’ subfolders before you start this process. In this example, we will create a folder called Receipts.  For more information on creating a personal folder, please review the newsletter article Creating Personal Folders In Outlook

1. Click on Tools and select Rules Wizard

2. Click New.

Note: Any Rule without a CHECK by it is not in effect, and will not be run against any email.

3. Create a Rule from a template to let the Wizard walk you through it.
   
   
4. Since this RULE is for Receipts, click the Next > button to go to the more options page.

Note: You can use the option above to add a rule that only applies to people from the Global Address Book or your Personal Address Book and Contacts. Click on the description people or distribution list to see.

5. Uncheck “from people or distribution list“ and check “with specific words in the subject”.

6. Since this rule is for moving Receipts, we will add keywords to it. Click on the highlighted “specific words”.

7. This is where it can get a little tricky. There are 2 words that are associated with this, Read and Delivered. Since this rule will check all email, make sure that you put the COLON after each word. – Read: and Delivered: 

When you have added both to the Search list, click the OK button.

Note: This should keep the letter from your boss that says READ THIS NOW from going to the Receipts folder since it doesn’t have a “:” after READ.

8. Now click on the highlighted “specified” so you can select the folder to move your receipts to.

(Notice that if a message comes in to our example from anybody in Dallas, there is a folder for those.  The same goes for Baseball in this example)

 *** This means, Be SPECIFIC when naming your folders. Don’t call it LSU and put everything from people on the Global Address List in it. Name them by Dept, Subjects, Projects, etc…

9. Double-Click on the folder called Receipts or highlight it and click the OK button

10. Click Finish.

Notice that there are several other options you can use when setting up rules. Want to know if you are still getting mail on your USERID@lsumc.edu address? Add that to your Contacts, then set a rule that can move those emails to a folder so that you can reply back to them and tell them that your correct email address is USERID@LSUHSC.EDU.

11. If this pops up, just click OK. It means that the rule will only operate if you are logged into Outlook.

12. Click the OK button at the bottom to set your new rule into effect. This will affect any NEW mail that comes into your Inbox. If you want it to apply to messages already there, you can click the Run Now… button to manually run any or all of your rules.

The new Rule is now at the top of the list and will run 1^st.  Meaning that if a message from Read: or Delivered: comes to you, it will be moved before any of the other rules can be executed. Sometimes if you use multiple rules like in this example, you may receive a message that gets moved before the rule you wanted to use has a chance to run. For example, if a message is received about Baseball with “Please Read: New Baseball Teams Announced”, the 4^th rule in the above graphic called Commish would not apply to that because that rule only applies to messages in my Inbox, and the new 1^st rule has moved it from the Inbox on the server to the Receipts folder.

The Rules Wizard gives you the opportunity to organize your email more efficiently into separate categories, depending on the type of email.  For more information on the Rules Wizard, check your online help in Microsoft Outlook.  In addition, you may contact us at sh-helpdesk@lsuhsc.edu or call us at x5470, menu option #2.