Tech Tip: Organize your Outlook mailbox using Rules

February 28th, 2022

With the transition to a remote/hybrid workforce, utilizing email for communication has never been more prominent. At times, it can become overwhelming to sort and search for specific emails, and keep track of day-to-day operations. Luckily, Outlook provides us with the tools to automatically maintain an organized mailbox through the use of custom action rules.

What do rules do?
A rule is an action that Outlook automatically performs on sent or received email messages, based on conditions you specify, such as moving all messages from a specific person into a folder other than your Inbox.
In this Tech Tip, we will be focusing on creating rules for specific senders.

Creating a rule:
Step 1:
Right-click on an email in your mailbox, then select Rules > Create Rule.

Step 2:
Review the options- For this example, we will be selecting “From Sender”.

Step 3:
Select “Move the item to folder”, then click the “Select Folder” button.

Step 4:
Here you will create a new folder by clicking “New…”, then choose a Name in the new window that appears. When finished, click “Ok” on both windows.

Step 5:
Back at the “Create a Rule” window, you should now see the folder you created in the bottom field. You can now select “Ok”. A new window will appear with the option to run this rule on all previous emails (moving all existing emails too).

That’s it!
You should now be able to see your new folder along the left-side pane in Outlook.
Outlook will now automatically organize future emails for you- directly into this folder!

Tech Tip Provided by:
Joe Ghandour
Helpdesk Technician


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