I love Outlook Rules!

October 5, 2012 6:25 AM

I have a shared folder with one of my bosses where he dumps emails for me to file. I would like to create a rule in Outlook to alert me when something has been placed in this folder. Help? Can you set rules for shared folders? I have Outlook 2007
posted by Danithegirl to Work & Money (5 answers total)

I have a couple of things like this set up in my Outlook and all I do is set the folder (right click --> properties) to 'Show total number of items.' Then anything I've seen already or dealt with gets moved to a subfolder where it doesn't add to the total. What you get is the little folder icon on the left side of Outlook with a number in brackets (assuming there's anything in there) and it's bolded.

If you can't move the filed emails out or to a subfolder this won't work for you, though.
posted by shakespeherian at 6:52 AM on October 5, 2012

Tools/rules and alerts/new rule

Check messages when they arrive/next

Select From people or distribution list, click the “People or distribution list” link and select your boss. Select and other conditions there that you want to sort with.

Click Next, then you can set what you want to do with it from there. “Play a sound” may be an option you want, or moving into your inbox, whatever would best suit you.

You may have to mark "Stop processing rules" on this folder if it is shared but from a quick google search it looks like it is possible to set rules on shared folders.
posted by gregjunior at 8:37 AM on October 5, 2012

Similarly to gregjunior's good advice (or perhaps as well as it) Outlook 2007 also allows you to colour emails which correspond to certain conditions, so you could make all your boss's incoming emails show up in red, for example.

Personally I tend to mark stuff as "unread" if I want to deal with it later, and then just deal with all the "unread" ones at the end of a sesion before logging off.
posted by aqsakal at 9:27 AM on October 5, 2012

To take it a bit further, if there is some property about the emails that will help you decide how to file them (for example, anything that has the word "recipe" in the subject or message would be filed in your Recipe folder), you can set up a rule to do that. So while you are trying to figure out how to be notified, you can also reduce your workload at the same time.
posted by CathyG at 6:00 PM on October 5, 2012

You could also mark every new thing into that folder as a flagged item automatically. Then it will show up in your tasks list.
posted by bbyboi at 2:52 AM on October 28, 2012