Besides a Message Rule, a Blocked Sender will do the same thing. So look at your Blocked
Senders List (Tools, Message Rules) as well.
Some things to note about the Outlook Express version 5+ Message Rules:
- Message Rules only work with POP3 server accounts. (For Hotmail set the rules on the
Hotmail web site.)
- "Apply this rule after the message arrives" text is not significant
- The Actions "Delete from Server" and "Do Not Download" can only test information in the
message header (FROM, TO, CC, SUBJECT, message size). If you test text in the message
body or "has attachment", the message must be download first for this test, negating the
action. Also, these must be the first rules in your list, or a preceding one may cause
the message to download. (Warning: "Do Not Download" should be a temporary rule. If you
just leave messages on the server, eventually your server mail account will fill and
you'll not receive any new mail.)
- The order of rules is significant. Rules are processed in the order listed.
- In most cases, you want to check the "Stop Processing" action on a rule, otherwise a
subsequent rule may override this one.
- There is no wild card support (e.g. * or ?). However, matching is done based on the
specified string appearing anywhere in the field. The matching is Not case sensitive.
- To match on multiple terms (e.g. "blue" and "sky" rather than the phrase "blue sky")
you have to ADD the terms one at a time to the rule (i.e. enter the first word, click the
ADD button, then enter the second term, click the ADD button, etc.)
- For switching between NOT, AND/OR logic, click on the OPTIONS button for the condition
- Blocked Senders is equivalent to a message rule of where FROM contains the name with an
action of Move to Deleted Items folder and Stop Processing. All Blocked Senders are
applied before the other Message Rules.
- After making any changes to the Message Rules or Blocked Sender list, you must use the
OK button to close the main dialog that shows the list of message rules or blocked
senders. If you use the Cancel button or the X to close that dialog, the changes you just
made are thrown away.
- For some Outlook Express Message Rules tips, see:
-
http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/tips/rules.htm
-
http://www.mindspring.com/~majik/messagerules.htm