Just a few years ago, my
email chores took up only a few minutes of each workday. Now it takes me
up to two or three hours to get through the hundreds of messages I
receive every day.
What’s interesting about this time increase is that it’s by no means
unusual. Most people find that when they really get into Internet email,
the messages start to pile up quickly.
To help ease the crunch, Windows Mail offers message rules,
and you can set up and configure these rules to handle incoming
messages for you automatically. Of course, these rules are limited in
what they can do, but what they can do isn’t bad:
If you’ll be out
of the office for a few days or if you’ll be on vacation, you can
create a rule to send out an automatic reply that lets each sender know
you received the message but won’t be able to deal with it for a while. If you have multiple email accounts, you can set up a rule to redirect incoming messages into separate folders for each account. Note
One of the problems
with redirecting messages to other folders is that it’s less convenient
to read those messages. Windows Mail helps by bolding the name of any
folder that contains unread messages. It also tells you how many unread
messages are in each folder. Windows Mail opens the folder tree to
reveal any folders that have unread messages. To enable this option,
select Tools, Options and check that the Automatically Display Folders
with Unread Messages setting in the General tab is marked.
You can create a rule to redirect incoming messages into separate folders for specific people, projects, or mailing lists. If
you receive unwanted messages from a particular source (such as someone
who is harassing you or someone who sends you an excessive number of
jokes), you can set up a rule to automatically delete those messages.
Here are the steps to follow to create a message rule:
1. | Select the Tools, Message Rules, Mail command. One of two things will happen:
If this is the first time you are creating a rule, Windows Mail displays the New Mail Rule dialog box. If
you already have at least one rule, the Message Rules dialog box
appears with the Mail Rules tab displayed. In this case, click New to
open the New Mail Rule dialog box.
| 2. | In
the Select the Conditions for Your Rule list, activate the check box
beside the rule condition you want to use to pick out a message from the
herd. Windows Mail adds the condition to the Rule Description text box.
You’re free to select multiple conditions.
| 3. | The
condition shown in the Rule Description text box will probably have
some underlined text. You need to replace that underlined text with the
specific criterion you want to use (such as a word or an address). To do
that, click the underlined text, type the criterion in the dialog box
that appears, and click Add. Most conditions support multiple criteria
(such as multiple addresses or multiple words in a Subject line), so
repeat this step as necessary. When you’re done, click OK. Windows Mail
updates the Rule Description text box with the text you entered, as
shown in Figure 1.
Tip
If you add multiple words or phrases to a rule criterion, you can make that criterion use Boolean operators such as AND, OR, and NOT. To do this, click the Options button in the dialog box that appears in step 3. To make an AND criterion, activate Message Matches All of the X Below (where X depends on the condition—for example, words or people); to make an OR criterion, activate Message Matches Any One of the X Below; to make a NOT criterion, activate Message Does Not Contain the X Below.
Caution
If you’ve defined
multiple rules, problems can occur if you have two or more rules that
apply to an incoming message, but the first of those rules moves the
message to another folder. In such cases, Windows Mail will often
display an error message saying that it can’t process more rules. To
avoid this error, add the condition Stop Processing More Rules to the
initial rule.
| 4. | If
you selected multiple conditions, Windows Mail assumes that all the
conditions must be true before invoking the rule (Boolean AND). If you need only one of the conditions to be true (Boolean OR), click and in the Rule Description text box, activate the Messages Match Any One of the Criteria option, and click OK.
| 5. | In
the Select the Actions for Your Rule list, activate the check box
beside the action you want Windows Mail to take with messages that meet
your criteria. You might have to click underlined text in the Rule
Description text box to complete the action. You can select multiple
actions.
| 6. | Use the Name of the Rule text box to type a descriptive name for the rule.
| 7. | Click OK. Windows Mail drops you off at the Mail Rules tab of the Message Rules dialog box.
|
Whichever method you used, here are a few notes to bear in mind when working with the list of rules:
Toggling rules on and off— Use the check box beside each rule to turn the rule on and off. Setting rule order—
Some rules should be processed before others. For example, if you have a
rule that deletes messages from annoying people, you want Windows Mail
to process that rule before sending out a vacation reply. To adjust the
order of a rule, select it and click either Move Up or Move Down. Modifying a rule—
To make changes to a rule, you have two choices: If you just want to
edit the rule’s underlined values, select the rule and use the Rule
Description box to click the underlined values you want to change; if
you want to make more substantial changes to a rule, select it and click
Modify. Applying a rule— If you want to apply a rule to existing Inbox
folder messages or to messages in a different folder, click Apply Now
to open the Apply Mail Rules Now dialog box. Select the rule you want to
apply (or click Select All to apply them all). To choose a different
folder, click Browse. When you’re ready, click Apply Now. Deleting a rule— Select the rule and click Remove. When Windows Mail asks whether you’re sure, click Yes.
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