MS Office 2019 (on local machine, not Office 365)

I've been getting a lot of spam recently, so I created a few rules directly targeting the offenders. But now Outlook is blocking nearly everything and I haven't been able to figure out why.

I had a rule in there for my niece, because none of her recent messages were getting to me. I just had it send all messages from her to my Inbox (which it should have been doing anyway, because I have never had a rule blocking her messages). It didn't work. This is what Outlook 2019 has for the rule when I look in Manage Rules and Alerts:

Apply this rule after the message arrives
from [my niece's address]
move it to the Inbox folder

Nothing else.

When I exit Manage Rules and Alerts I get a message stating that "The rule has a condition that the server cannot process. The action 'stop processing more rules' will prevent all remaining server rules from being carried out." But it doesn't say which rule is doing this or where it is.

I am tempted to delete all my rules, but some of them go back decades, through many old versions of Outlook. I am afraid that, as soon as I do, I will lose all the rules I have carefully set up over the years and be innundated with spam (and possibly grant access to those that may have contained a virus -- though I do have one rule in there to block messages labeled "VIRUS", which Avast generates when it finds one.)

I can check my mail server and I see that all the missing messages are arriving there. Outlook just isn't downloading them. But using webmail is a pain, because I have to check each of my email accounts separately and I have to respond in webmail, rather than using Outlook and quoting the original message. What a pain! Any ideas on the best way to address this (the safest way -- and, if possible, the easiest to set up.) Absent a better idea, I'm going to have to delete all rules and then catch the bad ones and blacklist them one-by-one, not knowing whether I will unwittingly create the same problem again by doing whatever is causing this.



Thanks in advance. The last time I had a problem with Outlook, this forum was where I finally got the answers that eluded everyone else.

Not sure I understand. Web mail is showing all the missing emails in your Inbox? But your Outlook Inbox does not have them?

My first thought would be a sync problem, not Rules.

Send/Receive All (F9) show any errors?

Show the Sync Issues folders (Ctrl + 6). Look thru them for errors?

Okay, this is really weird. I just wrote a reply and tried to post it. The whole background on it went red and then my post disappeared. I saw a brief message about an "invalid" post. What did I do wrong?

Send/Receive All (F9) show any errors?

- F9 does nothing in my version of Outlook. I don't know how else to "show errors"

Show the Sync Issues folders (Ctrl + 6). Look thru them for errors?

- Ctr+6 changed the columns a bit in my Inbox. It was hard to tell if it did anything else. I did not see anything labled as "errors".

Getting really weird now. I tried to send a message to myself in Outlook. Going from the email address provided by my ISP to one of the accounts hosted on my mail server. It's now in my Sent folder, but it never appeared in my Inbox in Outlook.

The message did hit my mail server, though. It's in my Inbox, in webmail for the intended account.

Outlook just doesn't seem to be retrieving any messages from my mail server.

Tried one more thing: Running MS Outlook Inbox Repair Tool. It found and fixed about 500 unspecified errors. Outlook runs a bit snappier now. But no change with regard to this problem. Mail goes to my mail server, as always, but the messages never get sent to Outlook anymore.

I can send messages from Outlook, and the copy stays in my Inbox as it normall does. But I don't know if anyone has replied until I open my browser and login to webmail for each individual email account. And I don't know what's happening to messages that go to the email address provided by my ISP. (I'll have to check their webmail as well.)

Unless anyone has a better idea, I'm going to have to delete every Outlook "rule" and start from scratch. And, frankly, I'm inclinded to never use them again. My AV should take care of malware, as it does now. I'd rather have all the spam end up in my Inbox and have to delete it manually than have to hunt for my legit messages in several different places all day. At this point, it's just a question of which is the bigger hassel.

You said "MS Office 2019 (on local machine, not Office 365)" and "F9 does nothing in my version of Outlook".

Something is broken. How about Send/Receive All Folders using the menus?
Article - Microsoft Outlook: How to S...

In despiration, I have deleted all my existing Rules and I am basically starting from scratch with this. I will not be using the stop processing all rules command in the future. So, if it turns up in one of them again, I'll know that I didn't put it there.

It's 4:39 AM in my location at this time. So, most people aren't emailing me yet. However, I did get the notice of your last post in my Inbox -- and that's progress. Also, Outlook seems to be a bit more responsive, since I ran the Inbox Repair Tool app.

More info. Messages appear to be arriving and behaving normally after deleting all rules. However, when I create new rules, they are simply ignored.