Forum Discussion
Outlook rules - if/and/or statements?
Hi, isn't it about time outlook upgraded their rules so that you didn't have to create separate rules for incoming and out going messages? Having to create 2 rules every time i want an email to and...
I'd like to have the ability to create a rule with OR for example:
move all emails with [Confluence] OR (confluence) in Subject to some folder.
Now I should create 2 separate rules with Subjects.
Another example, my company sends internal news emails time after time, so I'd like to move all these emails in some specific folder and mark as read. Again is it close to 5 Subjects == 5 rules.
Github notifications, I'd like to route them by projects, like important/not important, again each project == 1 rule.
Now I have ~20 rules, and this is not the end 🙂
If I understood correctly, if I add a few strings in a subject, it will be AND, so rule will work only if all these strings will be there
In fact there is OR:
I strongly agree. It's 2024 and Outlook cannot do simple OR logic in a single rule. Baffling.
I would like rules for the web-based "Outlook.com" interface to also allow "OR" rules, e.g. I would like a rule that states "sender address contains: aminet, commodore, whdload" OR "subject contains: Amiga" in one rule. I don't consider this to be a complicated rule. Often there is no commonality in either sender name or subject, so an OR rule of this nature would be the only way to capture everything successfully in one rule.
Tygerboi
Victor_IvanidzeThis (see image) is not a solution, because it only allows you to do an OR with multiple values of the same field, but you can't OR between different fields, like From Bob OR Subject contains "sales."
Hi rbratton65,
you said:
>That is not a solution. It allows you to do an "OR," but only for the same field.
What is not a solution?
- Suppose I have a folder named Sales where I put all sales-related mail. And suppose all of this mail has the word "sales" in either the From field or the Subject. I would want this to be one rule, which I would name "Sales." I have to make two separate rules, and then if I ever want to change something like the destination folder, I have to find and modify two rules. This is worse than having both conditions in the same rule. I hardly consider that a "complex rule."
That is not a solution. It allows you to do an "OR," but only for the same field. For example, you can specify emails that are From Bob OR Alice, where both conditions are From, but you can't specify things like this:
Emails From Bob OR To Alice
Emails From Bob OR To Bob
Emails that are From Bob OR contain "sales" in the Subject.
Hi AlexPatton,
sorry I don't think here is any reason to discuss complexity of rules.
As far as I know, you cannot do what you want using rules.
Did you try to create a Power Automate flow?
I see a flow as an only possiblility. Do you see other ways or workarounds?
I have an issue where I receive emails regarding DMARC failures from a domain. When these come in, it can show 1 or more of 3 ways: In the subject, in the body, or in the address.
I am already using the "With specific words in the subject or body", but sometimes these notices come from an address like "email address removed for privacy reasons", and the message contains no text in the body, and the subject reflects a randomized report ID. I need to be able to check on an OR basis rather than an AND basis for this situation. As a system admin, I need to be able to create a minimalist approach to making these rules. I understand your stance on "complex rules", but simply saying:
IF "dmarc" is contained within the subject/body OR senders address, really isn't complex, it's simply asking for an instance of the same text in two different fields, contained on the same form instance.
This is what most people are looking for when they bring forward complaints about the fact this still isn't possible, not so much trying to combine 7 or 8 variations of context from 11 portions of the email form.
It's amazing to me that mail rules have been around for a very long time, since maybe outlook 2003, but you cannot create an OR statement, only and AND statement when creating conditions for a rule. This seems like it would be very basic logic to code. Very tedious to have to create multiple rules to satisfy OR conditions.
Thanks for your humble opinion. Microsoft always needs extra apologies for their failures.
But 2 (or 3 or more) simple rules are ridiculous when 1 slightly more complex rule would serve well.
In my situation where OR would be immensely helpful, I need email received from any of email accounts aATdomain or bATdomain or cATdomain or dATdomain to be moved to the MyCompyootr folder. How would four (count 'em 4) separate rules be better than one (1) that's only an RCH more complex than a trivially simple rule? I have multiples of this situation. And if one talks about keywords, some of them are very common terms; eg. computer, hardware, or software, all of which show up in many headers that do not arrive from the intended accounts. Just my $0.02.- Hi krutilkoa, if you are running your Outlook against Exchange online (Office 365), consider using a Power Automate flow instead of 15 or 30 rules.
- Yes I agree, should be personal choice if you want to have complex or simple rules, why does MS not give the user the option to choose instead of forcing you to just use simple rules
- Maybe, if you have 2 rules vs 4 rules. Personally, I have 15 +/-, if I should have 30 simple vs 15 complex, I'd like to choose. Also, it is not clear, how should it work.
Victor_Ivanidze yes I guess its personal preference
- You are correct, but IMHO to have 2 simple rules is better than having one comlpex rule.
- Hi Victor, or works on a specific condition, but if you want to specify more than one condition its always AND, e.g I want to say move messages from specific people(no proplem using or for several people) but then want to add another condition that says OR with specific words in subject. This does not seem possible without creating additional specific rules just for those keywords.
- Sorry I know almost nothing about Outlook for Mac.
Looks like you met a limitation of MS client software. Victor_Ivanidze Yes, for Mac.
- What client do you mean? My screenshot shows Outlook for Windows.
I guess you are running Outlook for Mac 😉 - Thanks. I use the new UI desktop client, it doesn't have these options but has other similar ones. Also, I'd like to mention that the old UI has a different interface with rules, and it has "is" or "contains" for From/Subject/etc. So as a workaround I can switch to the old UI, make rules and switch back.
