Your IT Consultant

Clean Up Your Inbox with Outlook Rules

July 16, 2020

Managing email can be a daunting task. Many of us get hundreds if not thousands of messages in a single day. You can use mail rules to help control how messages are handled. Computerworld has an excellent post that details how to configure and use Outlook rules. It is very important to understand the difference between server side and client side rules. Client rules are executed on the device you use to process the email messages. As the post states, "While Microsoft's Outlook apps for Windows and macOS support client-side mail rules (those that run on your device), the Outlook apps for Android and iOS don't. And if you use Apple Mail with an Office 365/Microsoft 365/Exchange account, the same limitations apply: Mail for macOS supports client-side filtering, but Mail for iOS doesn't."

As you can see, what you see in your Inbox will vary depending on what device you use to access your email. That is not the case for server side rules. Server side rules are dealt with on the server before your email client even sees the message. The out of office rule is an excellent example. People that send you email need to get the out of office notice no matter what device you use to access your Inbox. Without going into all of the technical details, review the post to see what conditions or actions would force a rule to be client side.

If you are not using Outlook rules already, it's way past time to figure out how to use them to manage your email.

Email: Phone: 703.359.0700
Digital Forensics/Cybersecurity/Information Technology
https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnsimek
https://amazon.com/author/johnsimek
https://senseient.com