"Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]"
Or simply use the Organize feature to color your mail according to the
criteria you set. Much simpler than using rules - which can use up your
allotment on Exchange.
After furious head scratching, Raven asked:
| How do I change the font color of message headers in my Inbox. This is
| required after messages have arrived into the Inbox.
When defining rules in Outlook and when using Exchange as the mail server,
can't the user specify whether they define a client-side or server-side
rule? I'm not at work right now to see when using Exchange if I'm given the
choice of making a rule a client-side or a server-side rule, but I know the
rules that I've defined at work warned me that they were client-side rules
which only run when I load Outlook. I thought you could define client-side
rules which only run when Outlook is running. The server-side rules, for
which there is a limited quota in the Exchange mailbox, run on the Exchange
server so you don't need to have Outlook open to run them. There shouldn't
be a quota limit for client-side rules. I forgot how you differentiate
between client- and server-side rules when you define them and when using
Exchange. Of course, the OP never mentioned Exchange so all rules would be
client-side rules and not limited by the mailbox quota imposed by Exchange.
Also, the Organize coloring "rules" are almost so simplistic and limited as
to be mostly worthless. Maybe the number of conditions and clauses
increased in Outlook 2003, but in Outlook 2002 all you can color are
messages sent only to you and those sent by a specific sender in a long list
of senders (you cannot specify all senders listed in a particular contact
folder). Also, if you click on the Automatic Formatting link in the
Organize pane, you are taken to the same dialog where you can add more
formatting rules which include conditions, like triggering on the category
of a message, but then you must have used a rule to assign a category to a
message. However, the formatting rules let you define much broader or
narrower conditions on which to color a message or what font to use. If the
overly simplistic rules shown in the Organize pane are insufficient, you are
still taken to the Automatic Formatting dialog where you define the
conditions. You might be able to use conditions which don't rely on the
Category of a message.
Categories is only one condition you can test on. The Automatic Formatting
dialog shows many different types of conditions on which you can test. The
OP was vague as to why they wanted to color their messages, which ones to
color, and under what conditions the messages got colored. I just picked
using Categories since that is often suggested. I could've just stopped at
the Automatic Formatting dialog and let the user decide what to use.
