Forum Discussion
Outlook rules - if/and/or statements?
In fact there is OR:
- 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."
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.
