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 Wizard.

 

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

-          Click the Tools menu and click Rules Wizard

-          Right-click an e-mail and click Create Rule

 

If you click the Tools menu and click Rules Wizard, here is what you will see:

 

 

 

When you click New, you will see this window:

 

 

The first two radio buttons offer you the option to either create a rule from a template or to start fresh. If you’re new to using rules, it may be easiest to use a template. Just select a template in Step 1 (the first white box), and then in Step 2 click on the blue underlined values to put in your own information. (In the sample above, you’d need to click on people or distribution list and the word specified.)

 

When you click next, the rest of the wizard will start, but the boxes will already be filled out for you. (This is where you would start off if you had right-clicked an e-mail and clicked Create Rule.) You don’t have to worry about anything except clicking through the wizard! You can also click Finish at any point to avoid clicking through all those windows.

 

 

If you choose to start fresh, using a blank rule, the only option you will have is whether to apply the rule after messages have been sent, or after they arrive. When you click next, the wizard will be launched, but none of the boxes will be checked, 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 on the underlined value in Step 2 to specify your information.

 

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 on an underlined value in step 2, Outlook will force you to fill out the information before you proceed.)

 

Once you click next, the screen will change to the one pictured on the right. 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 need to click on the underlined value in step 2 to specify your information. (You’ll see the values you set up in the previous screen in step 2.) There are a lot of different items in this screen, from assigning a message to a category, to moving a copy to a folder, to printing it automatically.

 

Take a moment and scroll through these options. Once we’ve picked one, and filled out its values, then we can click next. (If you forget to fill out one of the values by clicking on it, Outlook will remind you to do so before it will let you move on.)

 

 

This last window will let us set exceptions to our rule if we want. (This is the only screen that is optional.) An exception means a circumstance where Outlook won’t process the rule that you’ve specified. Using this screen is the same as before: check the exceptions that you want, and click on the underlined values in step 2 to fill in your specific information.

 

There are almost as many options in the exceptions list as there are in the actions list, so let’s take a minute to look through them all. Like the others, they’re pretty self-explanatory.

 

 

 

 

Once we’ve completed our exceptions list, it’s time to finish up the rule.

 

 

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.

 

The last set of options, 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. 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.)