Forum Discussion
How to restore rules for Outlook 2019
My PC had a crash. After I rebooted the PC, I had the following error that I could not get rid of by restarting Outlook:
"There was an error reading the rules from the server. The format of the server rules was not recognized. Your stored rules appear to have a bad format"
I have 5 POP accounts and 1 Exchange account (for my Microsoft account).
I did the following:
outlook.exe /cleanrules
The error was gone. I back up my files daily, so I restored a PST file of an account for which I created most rules. Unfortunately, the rules window is still empty.
Where are the rules stored for Outlook 2019?
3 Replies
Pop account rules, are generally in the PST file whereas exchange accounts have their rules on the server. Since you ran outlook.exe /cleanrules, chances are the rules were removed. Unless your restore included a backup with the rules, you'll have to re-create them.
Hi, before cleaning rules, back up your PST/OST files and export any rules still visible. If the issue is only with the Exchange mailbox, check Outlook on the web first. outlook.exe /cleanserverrules clears server rules, while /cleanclientrules targets local client rules. I’d avoid /cleanrules until last because it removes both.
The timeline is as follows:
All PST files were backed up.
Outlook worked flawlessly for over 10 hours.
PC crashed and rebooted
Outlook showed the aforementioned error message. Most rules were missing, and one rule showed random letters.
I closed Outlook.
Replaced a PST file with its backup copy as described in step 1.
The rules are still missing.
One of the email accounts has lots of empty messages as shown by the following screenshot:
If I try to delete one of them, I get the following:
