Creating message rules in Outlook 2003:

Message rules can help you organize your e-mail messages as well as automatically delete unwanted messages.  They work in conjunction with folders.  To learn how to create folders, click the 'Folders' link above.

In this example we'll create a message filter that will allow Outlook to automatically send e-mail to a specified folder.

On the Toolbar, click Tools and select Rules and Alerts from the menu.

The Rules and Alerts window appears.

On the E-mail Rules tab, click the New Rule button.

The Rules Wizard window opens.

Select Start from a blank rule.

Step 1: Select when messages should be checked  =  highlight Check messages when they arrive.

Click Next to continue.

Note the two boxes:  Step 1: Select condition(s) and Step 2: Edit the rule description...  .

In the upper box, scroll down until you find with specific words in the sender's address and select it.

In the lower box, click specific words.

The Search Text window opens.

In the first field, enter, one at a time, the words for which you'd like Outlook to search.  In this example, I entered 'grandma@ispname.com' and 'grandpa@ispname.com'.

Click Add after each entry.

Click OK when finished.

The addresses now appear in the second box.

Click Next to continue.

Now we'll stipulate what we'd like Outlook to do with the e-mails containing the words we've entered.

In the upper box, select move it to the specified folder.

In the lower box, click specified.

The following window appears:

Select the folder in which you'd like Outlook to place the e-mails.  In this example, I selected the folder we created in the 'Folders' tutorial:  'Family'.

Click OK when finished.

The 'Family' folder now appears in the second box.

Click Finish to complete the rule.

We return to the Rules and Alerts window.

The new rule now appears in the list of rules.

You can create as many as you'd like.

Click OK to apply the changes and close the window.

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