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HOW TO CREATE CUSTOM EMAIL

RULES & ALERTS IN OUTLOOK 2013

[GUIDE]

One of the reasons why most heavy email users prefer Microsoft Outlook over other email

clients, including the likes of Mozilla Thunderbird and Opera Mail, is the range of

customizations it’s to offer. Outlook 2013, like all other Office 2013 suite apps, has been updated

with a truckload of improvements and features, allowing users to easily configure, read, compose

and manage email archives. Sporting the Modern UI (formerly known as Metro UI) design, it

comes packed with a number of legacy tools and features, which are extremely popular among

its users. For instance, the Rules & Alerts feature is used by almost all the avid Outlook users, as

it not only helps them manage daily emails, it also allows creating custom alerts for IMAP/POP3

email accounts as well as associating conditions with selected email accounts. For those who’ve

just started using Outlook, it lets you create three types of custom email rules &

alerts including Stay Organized, Stay Up to date and Blank Rule. Read detail about rules

Here.

You can create condition-based alerts

and email processing rules using the

simple RulesWizard. There are some extra

options available for each rule to help you

apply the rule on a specific account or all

configured accounts. In order to create a rule, launch Outlook, navigate to Home tab and

select Manage Rules & Alerts from Move section.

This will bring up Rules & Alerts window, letting you choose the email account you wish to

create rules and alerts for. Here, you can manage all your existing rules, associate different

accounts with them, delete selected rules and import & export rules.

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SETTING UP “STAY ORGANIZED” RULES

Creating a new rule is easy. The New Rule button will start the

Rules Wizard, which shows you a number of conditions for

specifying the scenario you were aiming to use rules in. Make

sure that you select the email account from Apply changes to this

folder drop-down menu for which you’re creating a rule.

If you, for instance, want to move the emails from a specific

sender to a folder. Just select Move messages from someone to a

folder and follow the wizard steps; fill in all the required details

including email address of the sender, folder name and location (if not existed, you can create

new folder for the rule) and other optional details like run the rule for all accounts or only

specific accounts etc.

The best thing about this Rules & Alerts feature is that it enables you add

exception for those emails, which you may not want Outlook to consider

while taking the specified actions. For instance, consider a scenario

where you’re moving or deleting spam emails (received from multiple

email accounts), which include IMP READ IT NOW! text in email

subject. Now, what if you receive any important email containing the

subject text you flagged for spam emails. It will move/delete the email,

which you actually did want to receive in general inbox folder. For such

cases, the Exception option comes in handy. You can exclude

sender’s contact details, email address, email text body details and even

all contacts’ email addresses in order to run the rule for only specific

scenarios.

Often, spammers use different email addresses for sending messages. Blocking such emails using

Outlook is as easy as creating a rule. You can choose to move messages with specific words in

the subject and/or email body to specific folder as soon as such emails make their way to your

inbox. Using the second option from Stay Organized section and filling-in the required details,

you can set Outlook to automatically filter out smart spam emails.

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Want to move the emails that

are sent to a specific public

group to a group folder? There

is a ready-made rule available

for such group emails.

Selecting the third option from

top in Stay Organized section,

you can specify the public

group for which you wish to

create a rule for. Once the rule

is configured, it will

automatically move the emails

to the specified group folder,

letting you easily find and

navigate through the emails

sent to the public group.

Next one is equally important, and often proves to be handy in situations where you need to

follow-up any specific task. Using the Flag option, you can flag emails from your supervisor in

order to quickly initiate the follow-up tasks. The last one is quite self-explanatory, and designed

particularly for moving the selected RSS items to the specified folder. For example, Click Here

CREATING “STAY UP TO DATE” RULES

There’s absolutely no better way to keep yourself updated with incoming messages than setting

up alerts using the Stay Up to Date feature. As the name suggests, it helps in creating custom

alerts for most important emails. Using the first option in this section, you can set Outlook to

always display custom alert text from specific sender in the New Item Alert window that will

pop up as soon as you receive the email. With this rule enabled and running, you no longer miss

out on important emails from specified senders. Just enter the email address and type-in the

custom message, and it will take care of all the messages you will receive from the specified

email address.

Just like you can set Outlook to display a custom message, the next option makes it play acustom

sound whenever you receive email from specified sender. Remember you can always add

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exception to the rule by choosing the required condition from Add Exception step of the Rules

Wizard.

Sending email alert to phone is probably the best way

to keep yourself updated with messages from

specified sender. Although, smartphone has almost

eliminated the need to use computers for

checking new emails, most users don’t want to keep

data connection On, all the time. Using your phone

cellular network, Outlook can send the email alert to

your mobile every time you receive important

messages.

CUSTOMIZING A BLANK RULE

If you aren’t among those folks who like to set up rules using the Stay

Organized and Stay Up to Date features, then Blank Rule is here to

help. This section offers only two simple options, but with a slew of

customizations. Pick either the messages I receive or messages I

sendoption, and design your rule with multiple conditions. Outlook

will carry out the defined operations when all the specified conditions

are met. For example, you can create a Blank Rule for situations

where you want to automatically print the emails which are marked

as high importance, contain specific words/phrases in the email body,

and are received only to your specified email account. Creating this

rather complex rule is not at all difficult. Just select theApply rule on

messages I receive option, and then select the required conditions from

Rules wizard.

Read more about the Rules and Alerts configurations Here

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What types of rules you set up in Outlook to stay organized? Does the Alerts feature help you

stay updated? Do let’s us know in the comments section.

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