Hello everyone,

I've been searching all over the internet to see if it would be possible to only have the Outlook "Rules" be set to manual (ie - instead of them being automatic, I want to be able to hit the "Run Rules" button and then the rules will apply).

Reason I want to do this is because I like how Gmail is set up where there are labels attached to everything and all I have to do is create a new "label" and archive it in the folders.

With Outlook what I run into is that I can create the rules, but if I make the rule to automatically sort to a certain folder, I the subfolders do not become bold when a new email comes and I may miss it.

So, my question is.. can you create a rule that will override all previous rules (all my rules are set to sort incoming emails to specific subfolders) to only work when I manually run my rules.

Thanks

Hi,

I think you are looking for Quick Steps, which (in Outlook 2010) can mimic Outlook Rules with the caveat that you must invoke them by clicking on a button. You would have to duplicate each of your rules as a Quick Step.

Alternatively, you could turn all your rules off and then go in and run them manually via Rules...Manage Rules and Alerts...Run Rules Now.

Hope this helps!

Mike Sperry
http://www.SperrySoftware.com
Find 37 Outlook add-ins that can make a difference!

Thank you Mike -- I did a hybrid of what you were talking about and it works perfectly.

I didn't really have time to figure out the Quick Steps, so they may do the exact thing I did, but this is what worked for me:

(1) I set up the rules that I wanted, (example: I set a rule to automatically filter incoming mails to specific folders)

(2) I turned off the rules as you suggested

(3) Developed (copied) a macro to enable me to press a button to automatically run all the rules and it will sort them to the folders.

Below is where I got the information.

To make the macro step by step, I went to:
http://pyrocam.com/how-to-run-outloo...from-a-button/

(for some reason his script didn't work for me, so I went to another site -- see below -- and took the script from his site and it worked perfectly)

Here's where I took the script from (see Sosipater's comment about half-way down)
http://community.spiceworks.com/topi...n-outlook-2010

Hope this helps and thank you for your help as well -- I don't know why I didn't even think to turn off the rules.