Does anyone know if it’s possible to modify the rules in MS Outlook 2000 with a text editor? The “Rules Wizard” is just too annoying for me. It can’t handle any sort of boolean statements and I hate the way it ‘sorts’ the ‘order’ in which it ‘processes’ the ‘rules’. I’ve been looking hither and yon and can’t find any documentation on hacking the rules … heck! I can’t even find any documentation on where the rules are on my hard drive. I’m one of those folks that gets a great big number of eMails every day and I would *love* to be able to sort and file and folderize and blah blah blah in some sort of effective manner. Help?
Found this cool page with some stuff about Outlook, but nothing on the Rules …
I can’t tell if you’re having problems finding the file or editing it. If the problem is that you’ve found it and try to open it with notepad (or whatever) and it fails, the answer is “no”. If you can’t find the file, try this:1.) Modify the file in some way, save it.2.) Start > Find > File or Folders. Use the Advanced feature to look for “*” (all files) that were modified today. Then sort by date, it should be at (or very near) the top and the name will probably be pretty obvious.Sorry I can’t be more help, I use Linux.Regards,Jason
*Finding* it actually wasn’t that hard. I figured out how to find it about five minutes before you posted that idea. Now … anyone know how to *modify* it?!??
The short answer is “no”. For a long answer, try the following links:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;q235852
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;%5BLN%5D;Q146636
Yep, it’d be real nice to be able to only accept emails from the server where the sender is verified by the end users “contacts list” and / or to autoreply a very stern message to everyone else (junk mail). Of course, you’d have to add a button to the toolbar to pause the feature for any cute chicks you pick up in bars. I found a site that had some add on software in the form of source code, and was thinking of making a feeble attempt at gnireenigne it. If I can find my way back to it i’ll post you a link.
Ok. Found what I was looking for, as well as some additional info that somehow seems both encouraging, and discouraging. Good luck!
http://www.slipstick.com/emo/1997/up970804.htm#custom
http://www.slipstick.com/addins/custom.htm
Hi all,
I know there are plenty plugins for Outlook 2000, but all I want is a better Rules Wizard, i.e. one that works!
I find that setting up a rule where deleting an incoming email based on words in the body doesn’t work much of the time. I.e.
Say there’s a line in the source:-
A HREF=”http://217.21.118.2/users/beatles/track.html
If make a rule:-
“Apply this rule after the message arrives with “217.21.118.2” in the body permanently delete it.
It doesn’t work! I think the Rules Wizard is looking for whole words and not parts thereof, therefore my rule would only work if there was a space before and after 217.21.118.2.
Very frustrating!!! So I’m thinking there’s a better rules wizard I can use.
PS. I use MDaemon Mailserver at work and it’s got a similar rules wizard…..but it works GREAT…..I only wish there was one for Outlook!
Any ideas?
Ian.
This is a major pain for me as well. I’ve managed to create rules that filter about 50% of my spam and still sort the stuff I want to keep but it’s getting out of control. What I’d like to see isa rule based on html content. It seems to me that most of the spam that gets through for me gets through becuase it is a message consisting entirely of html content. So the rule sees none of the text it’s supposed to look out for. So my thought is that if there were a rule that you could set a percentage threshold of html content in a message then that would eliminate a vast majority of spam… none of the mail that I want to keep is all html so this would be perfect. Make sense? Any ideas?
Try PopFile (http://popfile.sourceforge.net). It sorts emails using naive bayesian filters. The only thing is you have to train it for a little while to filter correctly. PopFile can be used with any pop3 email client and it is administered though a web interface. However, there is an Outlook plug-in called Outclass (http://www.vargonsoft.com/Outclass/) which is much easier to use. It uses PopFile but you don’t have to configure PopFile when using Outclass, it just needs to be installed since Outclass uses it. Hope this helps. It has helped me a lot.
A simple check box or button that allowed you to run all rules would be nice. At the moment you have to go in and check each rule that I want to run. I keep all rules off as standard so that I can receive on my blackberry after work, so not having this makes a daily tedious task.