Outlook 2007 disappeared my rules

[Guest]

I turned on Outlook today, and my rules were gone. So were the commands for
making, editing, or deleting rules. Right-clicking on the e-mail address in a
received e-mail did NOT bring up a rules-creation dialog. There's nothing
about rules in any of the toolbars or menu drop-downs. (I'm using the word
"rules" here because Microsoft has chosen to call filters that.)
--Fred Powledge.

 

[F.H. Muffman]

I turned on Outlook today, and my rules were gone. So were the
commands for making, editing, or deleting rules. Right-clicking on
the e-mail address in a received e-mail did NOT bring up a
rules-creation dialog. There's nothing about rules in any of the
toolbars or menu drop-downs. (I'm using the word "rules" here because
Microsoft has chosen to call filters that.) --Fred Powledge.

Have you extensively customized the menus in Outlook? If you haven't, I'd
go to C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook
and rename the outcmd.dat file. That stores all the personalization of the
menu bar and it will get recreated. If you have, are you able to re-add the
Rules command if you try to edit the menu bar?

As for the terminology of rules vs. filters, a rule is much more powerful
than a filter. When I think of a filter in a physical environment, it's
sole purpose is to let some things through, but not others. It's still a
straight hose. Consider the coffee filter. Water is filtered through,
leaving the coffee grounds behind, but there's still one output. Whereas a
rule isn't a one way out system. It isn't even a filter, since nothing gets
left behind. It is simply a way to define where items should go based on
various values.