| Outlook
Express Rules are the secret to making
your E-mailing all it should be - fun and efficient. Rules
(or filters) enable you to reject mail altogether, or more
often, simply to sort it in your various folders so you can
separate your mail from other family members, home from work,
and the dreaded spam from everything. I think everyone I know
has at least one "Uncle George" who just insists
on sending them every joke, rumor, picture, and virus they
get. Rules can fix all that! Outlook Express provides the
opportunity to create almost limitless rules to suit your
needs. In this tutorial, we'll try to cover the basics so
you can set up your own rules and apply these basics to your
other E-mail accounts. Enjoy! |
| Start Outlook Express - By
default you should have at least two "shortcuts" to
Outlook Express. One on the desktop (the work area of your Windows
environment") and one on the QuickLaunch
bar (single click), normally located just to the right of the
"Start" button in the lower left
of your screen. The icon is a small envelope with two blue arrows
revolving around it. |
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| Typically your Outlook Express application
window should be divided into at least 3 panes. The left side
should have a vertically oriented pane containing your folders.
If not, you should have a small box in the upper left portion
of the application window, just below "New Mail"
marked "Inbox" (or some other box).
Left click once a window should open. To keep it there, left
click the little thumbtack in the upper right corner of the
"Folder Window". The folder window
allows you to navigate the various folders within Outlook Express.
The message window will show the headers (To & From info,
subject, date, etc. ) for all the messages in the folder highlighted
on the left. The preview window "previews" the full
message highlighted at the top. To see the full message, double
click the message header at the top. |
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| In setting up the rules, we will
be moving messages around to various folders to suit your needs.
You might choose to create a "Work" folder, "His"
and "Hers" folders, "Mom", "Dad",
"Kids", or whatever. For now, I'll just refer to "Mine"
and leave it at that. You can make it whatever you like. So,
with your layout set up, let's get started. On the Outlook toolbar,
left click on "Tools", hover over "Message
Rules ->" and then left click once on "Mail".
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| This opens up the "Message
Rules" dialogue box. Most of this is pretty self
explanatory. We will walk through a setup so you can get the
idea. After this first start, make whatever changes you would
like to get the desired results. The key to success is finding
the common denominator that suits your needs. Then using that
common denominator with the right results. For instance if you
are tired of reading all of "Uncle Georges" e-mail,
you could set up a filter to transfer all mail containing "george"
in the "From" header to the trash can. The danger
here is that all mail from ANY george goes to the trash. So
6 months later after you've forgotten all about "Uncle
George", your new boss, Mr. George sends you an e-mail
telling you when you need to catch that plane to the "sales
meeting" in Honolulu and guess what . . . all you'll get
is the pictures everybody else took. So rules can be a great
thing, but use them wisely. Also, don't be too fast to send
all of "Uncle George's" stuff to the trash. You wouldn't
want to miss the "you're the only nephew that listens to
me, so I'm changing my will and giving you everything"
note would you? Try instead to create a folder just for "Uncle
George" that you can peek into occasionally when you are
really bored. So, all that done, let's get on with "Rules"
for Outlook Express. |
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| Here you can see any existing rules (if any),
modify, remove them, or in our case click on the "New"
button. This opens the "New Mail Rule"
dialogue box. You have a number of options in two panes. The
top pane has to do with the "Condition"
for the rule and the bottom panel the "Action"
to take when those conditions are met. Note that each pane has
a "scroll bar" at the right indicating there are more
options then can be displayed and you need to drag that bar
up or down to seem all. Now, let's deal with "Uncle George"
(although we could just as well deal with a specific account
or word. Suppose you want all of the mail from you account put
in a folder with your name on it and all the mail for the spouse
in their folder. Here, you could choose "Specified account"
instead of "From People"). In the top pane place
a check mark in the "Where the from line contains People"
box BUT, it seems that it's really your wife's "Uncle
George" and she loves all his mail (obviously your not
exciting enough) so you need to be more specific, so scroll
down to "Where the message is from the specified
account" and any other rules that look helpful.
Check as many as necessary. Now go to the lower pane and check
the "Move it to the specified folder"
action. Now, suppose you've got a dial up and good ol' Uncle
George has a big bad broadband connection and is always sending
you HUGE attachments. You could check a condition of "has
an attachment" and an action of "Do not download"
and "Delete from server" and not even mess with it.
Anyway, for now, we're just going to move them out of the way.
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| Now, having chosen the conditions
we want to be met and the actions we want taken, we need to
define the specifics and name the rule. So, in the 3rd (bottom)
pane, you should see a list of all the rules and actions you
specified. Click the first blue hyperlink and designate
the condition detail, in this case the person "Uncle George".
You can type the name in directly or go to your address book
and choose the name from there to make sure you spell it correctly.
Notice that the rule description changes to the specific condition
and offers you the chance to choose an operator like "or"
instead of "and". Then choose the next blue hyperlink
to select the account you are interested in so you only filter
good ol' George's messages to you, not your wife. When you are
done with the conditions, we'll move on to the actions. |
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| Now we've decided who and what we
are going to filter and we just need to establish what we are
going to do with them. In most cases, we are simply going to
move them to a specified folder. You can choose either an existing
folder or create new ones. You might want a folder for particular
senders, or particular receivers. Separate work from play, scouts,
soccer, or whatever. You can also send certain mail straight
to the trash, but use this with care. It is not like your file
recycle bin. When they are gone, they're gone (depending on
your Outlook Express settings). Anyway, click the blue hyperlink
for the action you need to modify and you'll be given a list
of all your folders (in this case). Simply choose the
desired destination or click "New" to create a new
folder, and click "OK". Now, before you leave
here, name the rule to set it apart from future rules. Any name
will do, as long as you know what it means. |
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Click "OK"
again and you'll be returned to the "Message
Rules" dialogue box. Here you can create more rules or
"OK" and leave. These changes will take place the
next time you open Outlook Express. One thing in particular
you should do with rules is to block certain senders (spammers).
Outlook Express provides an "Express" way of doing
this by selecting a message in the "Message Window"
and then clicking on "Message", "Block Sender".
You will be given a confirmation that that sender has been
blocked. Occasionally, certain senders may accidentally be
blocked (I have no idea how it happens, but I've seen it).
To "unblock" a sender, go back to "Tools",
"Message Rules", "Blocked Senders" and
remove Uncle George from the "blocked" list. There
is a little reverse logic here. You are "removing"
from a black list, so removing a name means you will start
getting mail from them again. You can still go in and create
a rule to better manage Uncle George rather than just blocking
his mail.
Don't be afraid to use "Rules" as much as possible.
Keep in mind that some rules may overlap, so you may need
to put them in a particular order or add the "Stop processing
more rules" action to the action list. |
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