flag external emails in outlook

December 21, 2005 1:43 PM

Can I create an Outlook 2003 rule or use a plug-in to flag all exernal emails?

Here is what I'd like to do:
I have email rules set up in Outlook 2003. Emails from my boss are filtered with a blue flag for example. Is it possible to flag all emails that come from outside the company with a flag? It seems easy enough. “Take all emails where the sender email does not end with *mycompany.com and add a red flag.”
However, the rule is based on who the person is, not who they are not. Any ideas? This would make finding the random email that I got yesterday so much easier.

posted by hokie409 to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

I don't see an obvious way (which isn't to say there isn't a way), but you could probably do it with two rules. First, flag every in-coming message with a colored flag, then flag anybody from within your company with a different flag.
posted by willnot at 1:54 PM on December 21, 2005

You can say:

Apply this rule after the message arrives
flag message with Yellow
except with foo.com in the sender's address

On Outlook 2003 you can do this by:

From the Rules and Alerts dialog:
New Rule
Start from a blank rule, Next
Next (Yes, this rule will be applied to every message you recieve)
Pick an action, Next,
Choose exceptions (some strings in the sender address), name it and finish.
posted by aubilenon at 2:11 PM on December 21, 2005

Oh! If you're using exchange for mail that particular rule might not work. Probably you want to have a list of strings the sender's address can contain, including ldap addresses.
In that case, try setting the condition to "except with 'foo.com' or '/O=FOO' in the sender's address" where foo.com is the internet domain, and FOO is the windows domain.
posted by aubilenon at 2:51 PM on December 21, 2005

I followed aubilenon's instructions. The results were interesting. I choose yellow as the flag and all emails from my company get a yellow flag now. And for some reason all the external emails get a orange flag. I don't know why this is but it gets the job done.
posted by hokie409 at 1:33 PM on December 23, 2005

It worked the way it's supposed to in my tests! Weird. Do you have any other rules that assign orange flags?
posted by aubilenon at 6:29 PM on December 23, 2005