Outlook XP Rules and their order 2

[shutech]

I have the understanding that if you order your rules are applied in a top down fashion. That is why you can reorder them.

I thought that if you have a rule that moves a msg and it is the first rule that then if another rule down the line had criteria that fit that msg also moved it that the second rule would not apply because the msg was already moved?

I am trying to setup my rules and it is a pain. I have a couple msgs that are business related that I subscribed to and that I want. I have a rule that is at the top that searches for the header criteria and then moves it to a particular folder. Now giving that it is commercial they put in the body text similar to junk email. "to unsubscribe", remove from list"...etc..., So I have rules at the end of my list that picks out these word groups from the body and moves them to a junk email folder. What I understand should happen is that the first rule should run and move it then the later rule should not find the email because it was moved and that rule should do nothing.

But that is not what is happening. I end up with a copy of the email in the folder I want it in and also I end up with a copy in Junk Email?????

A bug or is my concept wrong, or not applying right or what?


Thank You

Michael

 

[meintsi]

Try adding to the end of your first rule: [stop processing more rules[/b].

Should do what you want if I understand your desires correctly. *Remember.......
If you don't use your head,
your going to have to use your feet.

 

[shutech]

Not sure if that is what I want. Let me try and explain this again. in a more ordered fashion.

Setup:

My Outlook has 8 rules: All applying to the inbox.

Rule 1: Look for the word(s) "Network World" in the msg header and move msg to Tech magazine folder

Rule 2: etc.
Rule 3: etc.
Rule 4: etc.
Rule 5: etc.
Rule 6: etc.
Rule 7: etc.

Rule 8: Look for the word(s) "unsubscribe" in msg body and move to Junk E-Mail.

Msg received into inbox
<_________________________begin>
From &quot;Network World@networkworld.com&quot;
To: michael

Subj: Weekly newsletter


Weekly news:

ighascgisagsdvks
vdsnblvvlbvfvf
f
ffvknfvnlanananfbfbvfjbf


If you wish to unsubscribe to this newsletter send a reply with your email in the subject to : kij@hbsdkj.com


<_______________________end>


Here is what I think should happen and I thought it did happen this way with outlook 98.

Rule 1 is ran it finds the msg above sees network world in the header and moves it to the tech magazine folder.

Rules 2 through 7 is then ran.

Rule 8 is ran against the inbox. Since the above msg was already moved out of the inbox it does not do anything with the above msg it isn't there to do anything with.

Now what is really happening:

It seams that all the rules are ran against every item in the inbox at the same time. Therefore Rules 1 and 8 are both picking up their respective triggers. rule 1 sees the msg header matches and moves it to the tech magazine folder. Rule 8 sees the word unsubscribe in the body of the msg and moves it to the junk mail folder so now I have 2 copies of the msg.

I am using the move option in the rule and not the copy option.

I thought that the reason that you can reorder rules is to aply them in a certain order so that if a rule is ran first on an inbox then a latter rule ran against the inbox might aply but because the first rule moved the msg the later rule wonlt find it to apply.

Michael

 

[smah]

meintsi is right. Let me try to explain it this way: For each message, the rules are processed when the item is received into the inbox - all the rules. To not process all the rules for a particular message, you would have to stop processing the remaining rules.

When you start having many rules, you have to be very anylitcal about what they say (and don't say) as well as the order they're in.

In your example above, changing the order of rules 1 and 8 would give you the results that you expect. Or you could add to rule 8 to exclude Network World.

 

[meintsi]

The stop processing more rules command added to rule #1 is only executed if the conditions of rule #1 are true, or in your case, the message is moved to Tech Magazine folder and no more rules are applied.. *Remember.......
If you don't use your head,
your going to have to use your feet.

 

[shutech]

Great, I was really faulting my first explaination with my second post. Like smah said, you have to be very analytical about these rules so even trying to explain it is difficult. Plus I really wanted to understand how the rules were processed. Thanks for the info guys.

Michael