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A Publication Featuring The Information Services Technology of Maine State Government

Making Outlook Work for You!

By Janey Barton and Meghan Doyle

Most of us can use ways to be better organized, so have you ever wondered or explored what the word "Organize" on that yellow icon means in your Outlook toolbar? It takes us to a screen that says "Ways to Organize Inbox". One of the possibilities is the Rules Wizard, which makes it easy to set up mail handling rules. If you get regular E-mail from someone (a supervisor, for instance) or an organization, you can set up a rule that E-mail from them will automatically go into a folder¹ you have set up.

This is similar to presorting mail for you. Will you just forget about E-mail that goes in that folder? Not really, since the new, unread E-mail will cause the folder name to be highlighted until the mail is read (or marked as read). This assumes you have chosen to view the Folder List at all times, so you see your folders in a list to the left as you look at your Outlook Inbox. There are numerous uses to which this could be put. When we had problems such as the ILOVEYOU virus, a rule forwarded that junk E-mail directly to the Deleted Items folder. Here’s how you use it.

• Click Tools
• Click on Rules Wizard in the menu. (Or click the yellow Organize icon on the desktop and select Rule Wizard).
• Click New and the wizard will take you through the steps to creating a rule. (For an example, let's assume that you want to create a rule to check messages from Jane Smith when they arrive and move them to a folder labeled Work).
• The first screen asks you which type of rule.
• Make sure the first line is highlighted ("Check messages when they arrive") and then click Next.
• On the next screen, check the "from people or distribution list" line.
• In the Rule description box, click on the highlighted area and choose the name (Jane Smith, in our example) that Outlook should search for.
• Click OK. (You could also choose other criteria and make it a more complex rule, like a certain word in the subject or body of the E-mail).
• Click Next.
• The next step is to tell Outlook what to do with the message. In our case, we want to move it to a folder labeled Work, so we click on "move it to the specified folder", and then click on the highlighted folder name.
• Choose the folder Work.
• Click OK
• Click Next.
• Any exceptions to the rule? Next...and then name the rule.
• Type in a name
• Click Finish. Voila! A rule. Once you have several rules set up, you can change the order in which they are processed (move up and down), copy, modify, rename, and delete them. You can turn a rule off, by simply unchecking it in the list. It could be a rule you temporarily don't want to use, but you don't wish to delete it either.
• Click OK to leave the Rules Wizard.

1. To set up a new folder: choose File, Folder, New Folder, then name it and tell Outlook where you'd like it to be located, and click OK (or right click on the folder Outlook Today, New Folder, name it, and click on OK).

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