Weekly Computer Tip # 76
14 August 2004

Ways to organise your Inbox - part I (Microsoft Outlook)

As mentioned last week you can create rules in Outlook to handle incoming mail and automatically file them into different folders. However,

Did you know ...

Outlook makes it even easier for you to organise the Inbox by creating a rule based on a message in your inbox or any other folder.

Here's how:

1. Open the message you want to base a rule on.
2. On the Actions menu, click Create Rule.
3. Follow the instructions of the Rules Wizard.

Let's use last week's tip as an example ... you've added a Subject to your email hyperlinks on your website and when somebody clicks your email hyperlink, the resulting e-mail will include your pre-defined subject. Whenever you get a message called "subscribe" in your inbox you want it to go to a specific folder. The steps to take in the Rules Wizard would be as follows:

1. Tick the third check mark. (with subscribe in the subject)
2. Click Next.
3. Tick the 1st check mark (move it to the Inbox folder)
4. In the Rule description box click on the underlined blue value of Inbox to change it.
5. Choose the relevant folder or click on the New button to create a new folder.
6. Click OK.
7. Click Next.
8. Click Next again (unless you want to set up any exceptions).
9. If you would like to run the rule on the current contents of the folder that contains the message (for instance your inbox) tick the "Run this rule now on messages already in Inbox" check box. The rule should read as follows: Apply this rule after the message arrives with <subscribe> in the subject move it to the <subscribe> folder
10. Click Finish.

The rule will be applied to new messages as they are received.

You can also tell Outlook that every message that arrives from a particular person should be placed in its own folder. You can, for instance, tell Outlook that every message that arrives from me is to be placed in its own tips folder. That way, your Inbox won't be cluttered up. (Not that I perceive my tips as clutter! ;-) How? Tip # 77!

Until next week.

PS I’m committed to sharing the best of what I know with others so please don’t keep me a secret. If you enjoyed today’s tip, please forward it to anyone you feel may benefit. Alternatively, feel free to reprint it (with full copyright and subscription information) in your newsletters and message boards.

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