How to automate your email: Setting up Rules

We have folders, categorization, and flags, all ready to help us organize our inbox. However, there is one issue with all of these: You have to do them yourself! Wouldn’t it be convenient if your email could be sorted automatically?

Well, you’re in luck! Because through the savvy use of Rules, you can do exactly that!

Creating Rules – Auto Sort & Auto Categorization

Through basic Rules, you can automate your inbox to your heart’s content! Here we’ll go over some examples of simple rules you can use yourself to clean up your inbox!

Auto sorting is a useful setup that make sure specific emails are always placed in a specified folder of your choosing! To create an auto-sorting rule simply follow these steps:

  1. Right click on an existing email
  2. Select Rule then Create Rule
  3. Check the box Subject Contains or From
  4. Enter in Subject Contains what email you want sorted.
    • For example: Emails that contain the word “Important
  5. Select Move item to folder and choose or create a folder
  6. Select Okay and then Okay again.
    • You can run your new rule on all existing messages!

Note: You can customize either the subject of the email you are trying to sort or who the email is coming from.

Auto Categorization will apply the color-coded organization function that we had learned about last week to all requested emails without you having to do a thing! This rule will help show you some of the options available to you through the Rules function of Outlook!

  1. Right click on an existing email
  2. Select Rule then Create Rule
  3. Check the box Subject Contains or From
  4. Enter in Subject Contains what email you want sorted.
    • Example: Email that contains the word “Important
  5. Select Advanced Options…
  6. Select Next
  7. Select the check box assign it to a category category
  8. Below there will be a small window displaying your built rule. Select the blue category text to select or create the category for your rule
  9. Select Next
  10. Select Finish
    • You can also run this rule on existing emails by selecting the “Run this rule now” option.

Congratulations! You should now have a fully functional categorization rule!

Outlook Templates

If you don’t want to go through the hassle of creating your own rule, Outlook provides all users with many pre-made rule templates for you to use!

You can access these rules through the following:

  1. Select File
  2. Select Manage Rules & Alerts

From here you can create new rules and adjust them as needed!

You should now know enough to create any type of rule to help assist your workflow! Next week we will be covering tips on managing your inbox so stay tuned!