Did you know that you can set up your Outlook mailbox to sort, forward or delete messages according to a special set of rules? For example, you can set up your inbox to automatically move a message to a subfolder, delete them if they come from certain senders, or forward them to another email address. If you don’t have subfolders in your inbox, you can easily create them by right clicking on your inbox and then on create new folder.

The rules are especially helpful if you want to get rid of spam or block unwanted messages from specific senders.

To set up the rules, please follow these instructions in Outlook 2003 or 2007: In your main window, go to Tools and then click on Rules and Alerts. Click on New Rule. You’ll see a list of options.

If you choose Move messages from someone to a folder, then you can apply conditions such as from a certain sender, or with specific words in the subject. Click on the underlined text in Step 2 to input the name of the sender or specific words for the filter:

In the next step you decide what to do with the email. Options include: move or copy to another folder, delete email, forward email and many others. Tick the option that you wish to apply.

After you select the condition and action(s), you have to decide if you want to allow other rules  to perform some action on the same email (sometimes you may have more than one rule). In most cases, this is not needed, and therefore you have to select, in the same step, the option stop processing more rules. This means that the email has been actioned; it’s been either deleted, moved or forwarded, so stop applying any other rules. The rule may end up looking like this:

There is also a step where you can add any exceptions:

Next, click on Apply and you’re done. The rule will be in effect immediately.

I set up my inbox at work to send emails from another departments into subfolders, to deal with junk email by deleting them, and to forward some emails if the subject line includes words that I added to a filter.

I hope these rules will help you too.