About rules

In Microsoft Outlook Express, you can use rules to organize your mail and news messages automatically.

A rule is a set of conditions and actions that you create to process and organize your messages. Each rule consists of two elements: one or more criteria that specify which messages the rule applies to, and one or more actions that specify what should be done with messages that meet the criteria. For example, you can create a rule that automatically moves all of the messages you receive from your manager (criterion) to a separate folder (action).

In Outlook Express, you can create mail rules to handle both incoming and outgoing messages, as well as messages from newsgroups. You can set up as many rules as you want, and enable and disable them as you need them. You can specify the order in which the rules are applied by changing their order in the list. Rules are applied in order, starting at the top of the list.

In addition to mail rules, you can also use the Junk Mail Filter to handle unwanted messages and the Mailing List Manager to organize messages from mailing lists.

Creating a rule

Enabling or disabling a rule

Applying a rule to existing messages

Changing or deleting a rule

Creating a new rule based on an existing rule

About the Mailing List Manager

About the Junk Mail Filter

Create a rule

On the Tools menu, click Rules.
Do one of the following:
- To create a rule that applies to incoming messages from a mail account, click the Mail tab for the type of account you have.
- To create a rule that applies to incoming messages from a news account, click the News tab.
- To create a rule that applies to outgoing messages from a mail account, click the Outgoing tab.
Click New.
In the Rule name box, type a name for the rule.
Under If, select an item from each pop-up menu, moving from left to right.
If a text box appears, type the text that applies to the criterion.
To add an additional criterion, click Add Criterion, and then repeat step 5.
On the Execute actions pop-up menu, click the option you want.
Under Then, select an item from each pop-up menu, moving from left to right.
If a text box appears, type the text that applies to the action.
To add an additional action, click Add Action, and then repeat step 7.

Enabling or disabling a rule

Applying a rule to existing messages

Creating a new rule based on an existing rule

Create a new rule based on an existing rule

On the Tools menu, click Rules.
Click the rule you want to base the new rule on.
On the Edit menu, click Duplicate Rule.
Click the copy of the rule, and then click Edit.
Select the options you want for the new rule.

Creating a rule

Enabling or disabling a rule

Changing or deleting a rule

Enable or disable a rule

On the Tools menu, click Rules.
Click the tab for the type of rule you want to enable or disable.
In the Enabled column, select or clear the check box next to the rule.

Creating a rule

Changing or deleting a rule

Applying a rule to existing messages

Creating a new rule based on an existing rule

Change the order in which rules are applied

Rules are applied in order, beginning at the top of the list.

On the Tools menu, click Rules.
Click the tab that contains the rules you want to reorder.
Click the rule you want to move.
To move the rule up, click Move Up.
To move the rule down, click Move Down.
Repeat steps 3 and 4 until the rules are in the order in which you want them to be applied.


	You can also change the order in which rules are applied by dragging a rule to a new position in the list.

Creating a rule

Enabling or disabling a rule

Apply a rule to existing messages

In the Message list, select the messages you want to apply the rule to.
On the Message menu, point to Apply Rule, and then click the rule you want to apply.


	To quickly apply a rule to all of the messages contained in a folder, click the folder, and then click a message in the folder. On the Edit menu, click Select All, and then apply the rule.

Creating a rule

Change or delete a rule

On the Tools menu, click Rules.
Click the tab for the type of rule you want to change or delete.
Click the rule, and then do one of the following:
- To change the rule, click Edit, and then make the changes you want.
- To delete the rule, click Delete.

Enabling or disabling a rule

Creating a new rule based on an existing rule