Want to be ultra organised? Let Outlook Express do your filing for you. You can set up rules which tell Outlook Express to send specific messages to a specific folder. For example, if you want all the messages from your friend to be delivered to one folder, you can create a rule to do that. You can create another for all your household bills.

To set up a rule from within Outlook Express:

1. From the Tools menu, select Message Rules to display the sub-menu shown below:
   
   
   
   
2. Click on Mail. The following window displays:
   
   
   
   
3. In section 1, select the Conditions that you want to apply to the rule – the email will only be filed in this folder if it meets the conditions you specify here. Remember the more conditions you specify, the less likely the email is to pass the rule and get filed away correctly.
4. In section 2, select the Actions you want Outlook Express to perform on the emails that meet these conditions.
5. In section 3, check that the Rule Description is accurate. Click on the blue links if you want to edit any of them.
6. In section 4, give this rule a name, for example Mum, or Gas Bills.
7. Click on OK to save this Rule.

An example Rule is shown below.



In this rule, when the From line in an email contains the email address alex_brown@blueyonder.co.uk, Outlook Express will automatically move it to the Work folder.

By the way, if you specify in Conditions that the Subject line or the message body should contain certain words, Outlook Express will not allow an email through if these words are misspelt. For this reason, we recommend that you double check in that there are no emails in the Inbox that should be in the specified folder.