Rules in Outlook 2003

June 20, 2008 12:06 PM

I use Outlook 2003 at work, and I have several rules created to automatically sort my incoming mail into specific folders. I usually create a folder for each department and sub-folders for each person within that department that I communicate with. My question is: Normally when an incoming mail message is recieved and sorted automatically into a folder, the folder's name changes to bold and a number is displayed in blue indicating the number of unread messages in that folder. An example would be I have a Jason Johnson subfolder in my Human Resources folder. The Jason Johnson sub-folder goes bold when I receive a message from him, but not the Human Resources folder it is contained within. Is there a way to make the "parent" folder go bold to indicate that a subfolder within it has a new message? I hope this makes sense. Thanks in advance for your help.
posted by adustum to computers & internet (3 comments total)

Outlook doesn't have this functionality.
posted by B(oYo)BIES at 12:14 PM on June 20, 2008

Seconding B(oYo)BIES. There is no default way for Outlook to do this, which is frustrating.
Here are a couple of things you could do though.
You could keep the subfolders open all the time. (which was not feasible in my case)
Here’s something else you could do.
1. Locate your mailbox or the .pst file where those subfolders locate.
2. Right click Search folders -> New search folder.
3. Select Unread mail and click OK.
4. Right click the Unread mail folder -> Customize this search folder.
5. Click the Browse button and select all the check boxes in front of the
subfolders you want to include.
6. Then we can move this search folder into the Favorite folders.
(via)
Or you could add the action "display a specific
message in the New Item Alert window" into each of the rule that you create
to move certain messages into subfolders or edit existing rules to the same effect.
posted by defenestratedego at 12:37 PM on June 20, 2008

Thanks a lot folks!
posted by adustum at 12:41 PM on June 20, 2008