Office of Information Technology Training & Development Outlook 2007 Advanced

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Lesson 1.2: Mail Management Tools

In the last lesson, we talked about organizing your messages using folders. In this lesson, we’ll expand on that concept and talk about using some of Outlook’s mail management tools that can automate the process, including the Rules and Alerts Wizard and the Organize pane.

Creating a Simple Rule

Wouldn’t it be great if every time you got an e-mail from your boss, Outlook moved it to its own folder? Outlook has a feature to do just that; it’s called the Rules and Alerts wizard.

You can get to the wizard in one of a few ways:

Click the Create Rule () button on the Standard toolbar
Right-click an e-mail and click Create Rule
Click the Tools menu and click Rules and Alerts

With either of the first two choices listed above, you will see this dialogue:

This is a simplified version of the Rules and Alerts wizard, which we’ll talk about in a minute. It’s a great way to create a quick rule.
The first part of the box (“When I get e-mail with all of the selected conditions”) specifies when the rule will act; the second part (“Do the following”) specifies what will happen when the type of e-mail you’ve specified arrives. At least one of the boxes in each section needs to be checked for the OK button at the bottom to light up.
Here’s an overview of the first set of boxes:

From	This box is automatically filled in with the sender of the e-mail that was selected when you clicked the Create Rule button. It can’t be changed in this window.
Subject contains	The white text box is automatically filled in with the subject of the e-mail that was selected when you clicked the Create Rule button. You can edit it just by clicking in the white box, deleting the text that’s there, and typing. (You can, of course, also modify the text that’s typed in there.)
Sent to	This message was sent to someone using a distribution list (a predefined group of contacts), so this drop-down list contains both the name of the distribution list and “me only.”

The second set of boxes tells Outlook what actions to take when the conditions in the first set of boxes are met:

Display in the New Item Alert Window	With the New Item Alert window, you can open the e-mail by clicking the Open Item button, edit the rule by clicking the Edit Rule button, or just close the window.
Play a selected sound	Plays a sound when the e-mail arrives. (Normally Outlook plays a sound anyway when you get new e-mail, but this is a way to have Outlook play a sound for only specific e-mails, or to set a custom sound for certain e-mails.) Click the Browse button to pick a file; you can also click the Play button to hear the sound.
Move the item to folder	This is the most commonly used feature. This option will move e-mails that meet the conditions set out in the first box to a folder that you specify. When you check this box, a window will pop up asking you to pick a folder. (You can only specify one folder.)

Here is a completed Create Rule box.

This rule will tell Outlook that when an e-mail arrives from Bugs Bunny, and was sent to me only, Outlook should play the tada.wav sound, and move the e-mail to the Deleted Items folder.
Once we click OK to this box, Outlook will bring up another box confirming that the rule has been created. You’ll also have an option to run the rule on messages already in the folder, which will help if you’ve created the rule after a lot of e-mail has arrived.

If you click the Advanced Options button in the above figure, you’ll get a totally different screen: step 2 of the Rules and Alerts wizard.

Using the Rules and Alerts Wizard

Let’s look at the Rules and Alerts wizard from the beginning. To launch it, just click the Tools menu and click Rules and Alerts, or click the Rules and Alerts button () on the Advanced toolbar.

The toolbar at the top of the dialogue gives you options to create a new rule; to change, delete, copy, or move the selected rule; or to run the rule now. The Options button allows you to import, export, or upgrade your rules.
If you’re just looking to make a quick change to a rule’s action, the Change Rule button is the best way to do it.

All of the options in the menu are pretty self-explanatory: you can rename the rule or add different options. You’ll notice that there are some new options that we didn’t have in the Create Rule dialogue box, like changing the message’s priority. The options that are already in use for the rule are highlighted with an orange icon (for example, Play a Sound and Move to Folder in the sample menu above). You can click those options to remove that action for the rule.
The icons you see in the menu are important when we’re looking at part 2 of the Rules and Alerts box.

This section is a list of the rules that are in place and the actions that Outlook will take. The actions are identified by the same icons that we saw in the Change Rule menu. In the list, there’s also a checkbox by the name of each rule. If the box is checked, the rule is on; if the box is unchecked the rule is off. You can click in the checkbox to change this on/off status.
Part 3 of the Rules and Alerts screen will give you a detailed explanation of each rule that is set up.

You can click the parts that are underlined in blue to change that action or value.
To create a new rule, click the New Rule button in the Rules and Alerts dialogue. The Rules and Alerts wizard will then launch.

First, choose to start from a template or a blank rule.

Then, click the blue underlined items to choose a specific value.

If you start from a template, the remaining steps in the wizard will be filled out for you. Simply confirm your choices by clicking Next, or click Finish at any point.
If you choose to use a blank rule, none of the boxes will be checked when you click Next, so it’s up to you what conditions you pick. It’s the same idea as before: check the conditions in Step 1, and then click the underlined value in Step 2 to specify your information. In this example, we checked “with specific words in the subject” and then clicked “specific words” in Step 2. Now we’ll type the words and click Add.

Once you’ve set the options in this window (you can check as many as you want) and filled out the values, you can click Next. (If you forget to click an underlined value in step 2, Outlook will force you to fill out the information before you proceed.) You will then see this window:

This is where you can tell Outlook what to do when the conditions that you specified in the first part of the wizard are met. Once you check an item in Step 1 of this box, you may need to click the underlined value in Step 2 to specify your information. You will also see the conditions that you chose in the previous dialogue listed.

Once we click Next, we’ll see our last set of options.

Step 1 in this window is to name your rule; this is the name that will appear in the main Rules and Alerts screen. In Step 2, you can tell Outlook when to run the rule. The first option tells Outlook to run the rule on messages already in the folder you’re in. (You can’t change the folder for this first option; you can just check the box to run the rule, or uncheck the box so the rule isn’t run in that folder.) The next box is checked by default; this will turn your rule on. The third box, “Create this rule on all accounts,” is available only if you have multiple e-mail accounts set up.
Step 3 gives you a summary of the conditions, actions, and exceptions for the rule you’ve created. Once you’re done, you can click Finish, and you’ll be back to the main Rules and Alerts screen.
Here, you can click Apply and OK to save your changes, or cancel to remove your changes. (Be careful; if you’ve added a rule but you cancel out of the Rules and Alerts box, that rule will be deleted.)
In summary, there are three ways to create rules in Outlook:

Create Rule box: The easiest way with only the most frequently used options available.
Rules and Alerts main screen: A few more options and a nicer interface, but still pretty easy to use.
Rules Wizard: More time-consuming and complicated, but has all options available.

Using the Organize Pane

Another quick way to organize your e-mail is the Organize pane. The easiest way to get to it is by clicking on the Tools menu and clicking Organize. The options will show up in a new pane between your Standard toolbar and your mail folder, like this:

You’ll see that it has three sections. The first section, Using Folders, allows you to move messages that you’ve selected to a folder. You’ll also see options in the top right hand corner of the window to create a new folder and to open the Rules and Alerts wizard.

The next tab is Using Colors.

First, choose whether you want to look for messages sent from or to a person. Then, type in their e-mail address. Last, choose a color from the menu. Now, click Apply Color.

You can also tell Outlook to color messages sent only to you in a particular color; this is a good option if you get a lot of group messages and want to be able to easily identify the messages that are just for you.

The last tab, Using Views, will let you change how you currently view your mail folder.

The list of views in this last tab is pretty self-explanatory; you can change your view to all messages, AutoPreview (which will show the first three lines of your e-mail), messages received in the last seven days, a timeline view, unread messages, who the message was sent to, what Outlook data file it’s in, or what messages have been downloaded.
To close the organize pane, just click the X in its top right hand corner.

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