Get Rid of Spam With Outlook Rules

Process Automation

May 29

Anyone with email knows how pesky spam can be. Luckily, Outlook offers a few different rules that allow you to automate how you handle spam email that your email doesn’t recognize as spam (or that you don’t want marked as spam, but also don’t want clogging up your inbox). This is particularly useful for newsletters and subscription emails you may want to keep for reference but not stare at all the time.

There are a few different conditions you may want to consider when telling Outlook what to filter out. The most common are:

Sent from
With _______ in subject and/or body
With specific words in the body
With specific words in the message header
With specific words in the recipient’s address
With specific words in the sender’s address
From RSS feeds with specified text in title
From any RSS feed

Once you have an idea of what you want to remove from your inbox, you can determine which action you want to take. Some of the more common actions for spam email include:

Move it to the specified folder
Assign it to the ___________ category
Delete it
Permanently delete it
Move a copy to the specified folder
Mark it as read
Apply retention policy

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.

To further optimize your email, you may want to consider organizing emails you want to keep, automating some of your forwarded emails and replies, and/or prioritizing your emails. If you have a unique situation, you may want to consider some of these lesser-known applications.