Member Login Book Marks How to Create a Rule in Microsoft Outlook If you're one of those popular, busy people who receives dozens of emails an hour (either at home or in the workplace), then you might also find yourself wasting precious time opening emails of low importance and wondering how to make more efficient use of your time. Modern office applications such as Outlook provide an array of features that help you to do this, and one of the most popular methods of improving time management is to get the application to sift your emails for you by use of the Rules feature. Creating Rules will enable you to perform certain actions automatically based on specific criteria of your choosing, freeing you to focus on critical new email. Read on for the lowdown. Step-by-Step Instructions 1 Launch Outlook by locating the Microsoft Office folder within the Start Menu and clicking the Microsoft Outlook entry. The program can take several seconds to initiate, especially if you have many folders containing a high volume of entries (such as email, contacts, appointments and tasks). 2 Click Tools on the main toolbar and choose Rules and Alerts. The Rules and Alerts dialog is displayed. If any current Rules have been set up, they are summarised here and can be either edited or deleted. 3 Click New Rule to launch the Rules Wizard. Select Move Messages from someone to a folder and click Next. There are many different types of Rules that can be