How to set message rules in Outlook Express Email

By Mitz

See more Outlook Express Email Tips

How did you ever survive without Message rules? I really don’t know how I did. It is a handy tool in Outlook Express that is used to filter and organize your email messages into specific folders that you name. They also block or delete unwanted mail. How fantastic is that? In this article I will explain how to set some simple rules that you can start with. I will use this example: My friend sends me only funny emails and her email address is me@hotmail.com.

To send all her emails to a folder named funny do this:

Open Outlook Express.
Go to the menu at the top. Choose Tools>message rules>mail, then choose new.
There will be 4 boxes to edit. Go to the first one and select the box>where the from line contains people.
Then go to the 2nd box to edit. Select>move to a specific folder.

screenshot

Go to the third box to edit. Click the link that says contains people. This is where you put her email address me@hotmail.com and click add then ok. Keep adding more address’s if you want them to go to the same folder.

screenshot

Still in third box. Click on the link that says Specific Folder. This is where you select a folder for it to go to or make a new folder named Funny. Then press ok.
Go to the Fourth box to edit. Here you name the message rule. For example you could call it Funny items.
Your done!!! Press ok. Now next time an email comes in from me@hotmail.com Outlook Express will send it to the folder called funny.

If I decided that her emails weren’t funny and I wanted to delete them I would do this:

Open Outlook Express.
Go to the menu at the top. Choose Tools>message rules>mail, then choose new.
There will be 4 boxes to edit. Go to the first one and select the box>where the from line contains people.
Then go to the second box to edit. Select delete.
Go to the third box to edit. Click the link that says contains people. This is where you put her email address me@hotmail.com and click add then ok.
Go to the Fourth box to edit. Here you name the message rule. For example you could call it rubbish or junk.
Press ok. Next time an email comes in from me@hotmail.com it will be deleted.

You can get a lot more technical and choose to do all sorts of things with this little trick in Outlook express. I suggest you try a few different combinations to see how it works. You can even set the message rule to auto respond to certain emails. This is why Microsoft Outlook Express is a valuable business tool.

NOTES

Another way to make a message rule is when you have an email open, choose message from the menu above. Then choose create a message rule from…This makes it easy to create a message rule because it fills in the email address for you.