IdaleeWhiteKie said:
I currently have 48 rules in my Outlook mailbox. I need at least this many
to organize and manage a large volume of incoming mail. I've begun to get
error messages telling me there is not enough space. The only way I know
to
consolidate some of my rules is to use "or" statements, but Outlook
doesn't
seem to give any options but "and" statements - which don't seem to apply.
Has anyone else had this problem? How have you gotten around the space
limit?
That is not a lot of rules. Most likely is that you have defined some rules
that are huge just by themself, like listing tons of strings to check in the
Subject header or elsewhere within the same rule. You don't get to change
the size of the rules store for your mailbox, and neither do the Exchange
admins get a choice. That is a maximum in Exchange.
You'll need to review your rules to see how you can reduce their size. For
example, why bother writing a huge whitelist rule (to keep mails from known
good senders in the Inbox) when you could put all those known good senders
in your Contacts folder (or some other contact-type folder) and simply
define a rule that keeps all mails from any sender listed in your Contacts
folder.
Don't bother making a blacklist of e-mail addresses for spammers. Those are
NOT their e-mail addresses and they use different bogus ones when they next
spew, so spammers get a good laugh at users trying to block by e-mail
addresses (same for the Blocked Senders list).
Many times users will duplicate conditions in one rule that they then use
again in a subsequent rule. The rules are exercised in the order that they
are listed and they are OR'ed together. So if a rule tests a condition and
it is true, use the stop-clause in that rule if not subsequent rules will
apply or simply duplicate the same test or part of it.
Use anti-spam software rather than use rules. You will NEVER keep up with
spammers by defining rules to catch them all. After about 2 dozen rules,
you are losing the battle. SpamPal and all its plug-ins are free and better
than many commercial programs, but get SOMETHING else for spam filtering.
You don't mention why you need four dozen rules. You probably don't. For
those that you must have, don't define super long strings of phrases for
them to test on. Use the whitelist, blacklist, and rules defined within an
anti-spam program to tag the mails before they even reach your e-mail
client, and then use a much simpler set of rules in your e-mail client to
handle those tagged mails.
