Organizing Rules list

[jemilo]

Is it possible to alphabetize the Rules list? I have Outlook 2007.

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

No, not automatically. You can move them yourself.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]



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[F.H. Muffman]

Is it possible to alphabetize the Rules list? I have Outlook 2007.

No, not automatically. You can move them yourself.

Note that the order of the rules is the order in which they fire, so if you
have a particular rule you need to run first, or last, moving it means it
won't.

 

[jemilo]

No, not automatically. You can move them yourself.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]



Outlook Tips by email:
mailto:[email protected]

EMO - a weekly newsletter about Outlook and Exchange:
mailto:[email protected]

Let's Really Fix Outlook 2010
http://forums.slipstick.com/forumdisplay.php?f=34

Is it possible to alphabetize the Rules list? I have Outlook 2007.

It would be really useful. I don't understand the "order of the rules firing" ...

 

[F.H. Muffman]

Is it possible to alphabetize the Rules list? I have Outlook 2007.

It would be really useful. I don't understand the "order of the
rules firing" ...

Ok.

When a message arrives, rules are evaluated in the order they are in Tools
- Rules and Alerts. So, the first rule is used to determine if it should
fire. Then the second. Then the third. etc. So, if the first rule says:
Apply this rule after the message arrives
Stop processing more rules
that rule will fire on every message and will force no other rules to fire.

Why should order matter?

Well, the above option is one reason.

Or lets say you want to have a rule that does something to a message that
has both URGENT and Daily Report in the subject line.

Outlook rules system does AND between conditions and OR within them.

In other words:
Apply this rule after the message arrives
sent to SOMEDL
and with 'Urgent' in the subject
move it to the FOLDER folder

That rule will look for messages that are sent to the SOMEDL distribution
list AND have Urgent in the subject line.

However, if and with 'Urgent' in the subject is changed to look for other
words, it would say 'and with 'Urgent' or 'Daily Report' in the subject.

So, a message sent to SOMEDL that has 'URGENT: There is a stoat loose in
the boardroom' as the subject will fire that rule.

Or, a message send to SOMEDL that has 'Has anyone seen the daily report',
that subject will also fire the rule off.

But, that's not necessarily what you want. You want a rule that fires when
you receive an email that has both URGENT *and* Daily Report in the subject,
because you get an Urgent Daily Report every day whose subject looks like
URGENT: 2009-08-13 Daily Report, and since the date changes, you can't look
for 'URGENT: Daily Report'.

So, what you do is this. You create two rules.
Apply this rule after the message arrives
sent to SOMEDL
and with 'Urgent' in the subject
assign it to the CATEGORY category

and

Apply this rule after the message arrives
assigned to the CATEGORY category
and with 'daily report' in the subject
move it to the FOLDER folder

Those rules obviously need to be listed in the order above, otherwise it'll
never move to the FOLDER folder.

Make sense?

 

[VanguardLH]

Is it possible to alphabetize the Rules list? I have Outlook 2007.

Alphabetizing or any sorting is worthless. You want the rules to get
exercised in the order they are listed. Most, if not all, of your rules
should have the "stop processing further rules" clause in them. When
they fire, it is unlikely that you want more rules to get exercised
against the same message. Typically you want the first rule that fires
on a message to be the only one on that message; however, there are
times when you do want multiple rules exercised against a single
message. Without knowing what rules you defined, there's no way to know
if they should have the stop-clause in them.

Say you have a rule that deletes an e-mail. What would be the point of
exercising more rules against this already-deleted message? The side
effect of running more rules against this deleted message is that the
message gets undeleted because a later rule moves it to a different
folder.

You have to look at the flow of a message through your rules. The flow
is dictated by their order and what they do and if the stop-clause is
used in any of them.