Outlook rules are a powerful organizational tool for any work environment. If you’ve ever searched for an email to no avail, scrolled through spam to get to the emails you need, or confused conversations with people, you could benefit by using Outlook rules to organize your inbox.

If you’re trying to accomplish something a little unusual in Outlook, the standard rule options may not be able to do what you need. Before you try to create a solution tailored specifically to what you want to do, make sure there aren’t any conditions and/or actions that will accomplish what you need.

When you receive hundreds of emails a day, it’s not hard for an important email to get lost somewhere in the shuffle. By utilizing Outlook rules, however, you can prioritize your email so that you see the most important emails first.

Automating forwarding and replies ensures timely communication with the sender of the email, in addition to easing the burden on the individual. Being smart about applying these rules can save any company or individual a lot of time and effort

Depending on the email, you may want to move or copy it to a folder, mark it as read, or delete it altogether. Setting up these rules and creating any necessary folders may take a little time up front, but it will save you significantly over time.

When time is money, automation is your best friend. That’s something we’ve scaled a lot in the last few years here at FGS. We do a lot of variable data work, so figuring out how to quickly and accurately process data for mailers has been a consistent goal.

It may be hard to admit, but some emails are more important than others. You need to see an email from your biggest client before an email from a vendor featuring new equipment. By utilizing Outlook rules, there are several options to make sure you see the emails you need to see.

Whether you’ve dabbled with macros a little already or you’re just beginning to learn how to utilize this automation tool, creating macros that are available every time you open Excel (not just in a single Workbook) is a useful thing to know.