E-mail rules, need OR not AND

  • Thread starter Thread starter jss
  • Start date Start date
J

jss

I would like to move mail to a certain folder that is either to a certain
person or from that person. There seems to be no choice of how to string
together multiple criteia; all you get is AND.

Is there a way around this short of the tedious and stooopid making a rule
for TO and another for FROM?

TIA
 
I would like to move mail to a certain folder that is either to a
certain person or from that person. There seems to be no choice of how
to string together multiple criteia; all you get is AND.

Is there a way around this short of the tedious and stooopid making a
rule for TO and another for FROM?
Click to expand...

You could try 'with specific words in the message header', otherwise, you
either have to do something tedious and "stooopid" or not use rules and just
build a search folder instead.
 
jss said:
I would like to move mail to a certain folder that is either to a certain
person or from that person. There seems to be no choice of how to string
together multiple criteia; all you get is AND.

Is there a way around this short of the tedious and stooopid making a rule
for TO and another for FROM?

TIA
Click to expand...

Rules are OR'ed together in the order they are listed in the rules list.
AND'ing is done within a rule.

What you propose can't be done within a single rule, anyway. "to a
certain person" means you are sending an e-mails and "from that person"
means you are receiving an e-mail. A rule cannot test on both received
and sent e-mails. You will need one RECEIVING rule and another SENDING
rule.

Or are you just testing on received e-mails where someone is listed in
the To or From headers? For that, you'll need 2 receiving rules: one to
check if that someone is in the To header and another to check if that
someone is in the From header (i.e., the sender). In this case, you
should use the stop-clause in both rules since whichever triggers first
is all you care about. Leaving out the stop-clause can incur unwanted
side effects since subsequent rules are also exercised against the same
message.

rule1: from <someone>
<action>
stop processing more rules

rule2: sent to <someone>
<action>
stop processing more rules

If someone is in From, rule 1 fires (and no further rules are
exercised). If someone is in To, rule 1 is skipped and rule 2 fires (and
no further rules are exercised). If someone is in both From and To,
rule 1 fires (and no further rules are exercised). If someone is not in
either From or To, both rules 1 and 2 are skipped and further rules are
exercised.

In an OR, only 1 condition needs to be true. If the first condition is
true, you don't need to waste time testing the other conditions.
 
Thanks, that worked in this case. It was bit trickier than I expected as it
is case sensitive and the headers aren't all the same. I suspect matching
the addresses is not so sensitive and would work better.

I want to get the messages out of the inbox so a search folder didn't seem
right.

Is OL2007 more powerful in this regard?
 
Thanks, that worked in this case. It was bit trickier than I expected
as it is case sensitive and the headers aren't all the same. I suspect
matching the addresses is not so sensitive and would work better.

I want to get the messages out of the inbox so a search folder didn't
seem right.

Is OL2007 more powerful in this regard?
Click to expand...

No. Rules are the same. OR within a search field, AND between them.

But I'm pretty sure it isn't case sensitive. Seems a little odd that it would
behave as if it was.
 
I'll look into the case sensitivity again.

Now I am having trouble. I sent a few test messages to one of the accounts
Outlook checks. I've had a rule for a while that (generally) moves them into
a special folder. This one is on the same level as the Inbox.

I think it worked fine before, but now it leaves a copy in the inbox. I
don't have "make a copy" checked.

Are there any limitations on where the move-to folders are relative to the
inbox?
 
Nevermind..... the one in the inbox was a copy from gmail, the important one
was treated appropriately.

Still, while googling the problem I did see some concern about moving to
subfolders, or maybe even super folders. Is this ever a problem?
 
Thanks, that worked in this case. It was bit trickier than I expected as it
is case sensitive and the headers aren't all the same. I suspect matching
the addresses is not so sensitive and would work better.
Click to expand...

My experiments indicate that string matching in rules is not case-sensitive.
 
My experiments indicate that string matching in rules is not
case-sensitive.
Click to expand...

Microsoft and case-sensitivity go together like ... err... uhh.. two things
that don't really go together at all, I guess.
 
Still, while googling the problem I did see some concern about moving
to subfolders, or maybe even super folders. Is this ever a problem?
Click to expand...

The only time I ever see a problem when moving to other folders is when you
have another rule that affects the message which will either cause multiple
copies to go hither thither and yon, or to somehow get a copy left in the
Inbox itself. Unless you add the 'And stop processing more rules' action.
 
I'm trying to send all incoming mails including anyone from the domain
"tegron.com" to the Tegron folder.

The rule is if the word occurs in the message header ....

"tegron" moves a message. "Tegron" does not.

Now I find myself wishing that one rule could apply to sent or received
mails.
 
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