Outlook 2010 offers a handful of ways to create a rule. For example, you can click a message, and on the Home tab, click Rules in the Move group. Outlook offers options to create rules based on the sender or recipient, and the number of options varies depending on the message itself (see Figure 2). Click an option to open the Rules And Alerts dialog box, choose a folder, and click OK. Outlook will create a rule to move messages based on your selections.

Figure 2. Use the options offered in the ribbon to create a rule based on the current message.

If you need to create a new rule for the currently selected message with different actions (such as creating a rule based on the subject of the message), click the message and, on the Home tab, click Rules in the Move group and choose Create Rule. Outlook displays the Create Rule dialog box shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Use the Create Rule dialog box to create more complex rules.

The Create Rule dialog box offers properties based on the selected message, including sender, subject, and recipient. Choose the criteria for your rule using any combination of these three, then choose an action from the Do The Following group of controls. Click OK to create the rule. Outlook names the rule according to the criteria you selected, such as the sender's name and the subject.

When you need more complex rules, need to perform tasks other than moving messages, or want to create a rule that is not based on a specific message, you can turn to the Rules Wizard. You can open the Rules Wizard in a couple of ways:

You'll first see the Rules And Alerts dialog box, shown in Figure 1. The E-Mail Rules tab contains all the existing rules that you have defined. Outlook 2010 applies the rules in the order in which they are listed, an important fact to consider when you're creating rules. You might use certain rules all the time but use others only at special times. Each rule includes a check box beside it. Select this check box when you want to use the rule; clear it when you want to disable the rule.

When you create a message rule using the Rules Wizard, you must first specify whether you want to create the rule from a predefined template or from scratch. Because the templates address common message processing tasks, using a template can save you a few steps. When you create a rule from scratch, you set up all the conditions for the rule as you create it. You can use many different conditions to define the actions the rule performs, all of which are available in the Rules Wizard. With or without a template, you have full control over the completed rule and can modify it to suit your needs. The Outlook 2010 templates are a great way to get started, however, if you're new to using Outlook 2010 or message rules.

Let's look first at the general procedure for creating rules and then at more specific steps. The general process is as follows:

The following steps guide you through the more specific process of creating a message rule:

When you first open the Rules And Alerts dialog box, it displays the rules that have already been defined for your profile, both client-side and server-side, as shown earlier in Figure 1. You might recall that you use the Apply Changes To This Folder drop-down list at the top of the dialog box to select the folder for which you want to create or modify a rule. The rules that appear in the list depend on the folder that you select, showing only the rules that apply to the selected folder.

To apply a rule to a specific folder, select that folder in the Apply Changes To This Folder drop-down list when you begin creating the rule. To apply a rule to all folders, select the Create This Rule On All Accounts option at the completion of the wizard (as explained in the preceding section).

By default, Outlook 2010 doesn't create rules for all folders; instead, it creates the rule only for the selected folder. If you have created a rule for one folder but want to use it in a different folder, you can copy the rule to the other folder.

Follow these steps to do so:

Up to now, you've explored relatively simple rules that function based on a single condition or on multiple AND conditions. In the latter case, the rule specifies multiple conditions and applies only to messages that meet all the conditions. If a rule is defined by three AND conditions, for example, Outlook 2010 uses it only on messages that meet condition 1, condition 2, and condition 3.

You also can create rules that follow OR logic. In this case, a rule specifies a single condition but multiple criteria for that condition. The rule will then act on any message that meets at least one of the criteria for the condition. For example, you might create a rule that deletes a message if the subject of the message contains any one of three words. If one of the conditions is met (that is, if the subject of a message contains at least one of the three words), Outlook 2010 deletes that message.

With Outlook 2010, you can create several rules that use OR logic within a single condition, but you can't create a single rule that uses OR logic on multiple conditions. For example, you might create a rule that deletes a message if the message contains the phrase "MLM," "Free Money," or "Guaranteed Results." However, you can't create a message rule that deletes the message if the subject of the message contains the words Free Money (condition 1), or if the message is from a specific sender (condition 2), or if the message is larger than a given size (condition 3). OR must operate within a single condition. When you create a rule with multiple conditions, Outlook 2010 always treats multiple conditions in the same rule using AND logic. You would have to create three separate rules to accommodate the latter example.

If you have a situation where you need to check for more than one piece of data in a single condition, you can do so easily enough; however, when you create the rule and define the condition, specify multiple items. For example, if you need a rule that processes messages based on three possible strings in the subject of the messages, click Specific Words in the rule description area of the Rules Wizard, where you specify rule conditions. In the Search Text dialog box, enter the strings separately. As you can see in Figure 9, the search list includes the word or to indicate that the rule applies if any one of the words appears in the subject.

Figure 9. Specify data separately to create a rule that uses OR logic.

Although you can't create a single rule with OR logic operating on multiple conditions in Outlook 2010, you can create rules that combine AND and OR logic. For example, you might create a rule that applied if the message arrived at a specific account and the subject contained the words Free Money or Guaranteed Results. Keep in mind that you must specify two conditions—not one—to build the rule. The first condition would check for the account, and the second would check for the words Free Money or Guaranteed Results.

Consider the following example:

Look at the rule conditions in the Step 2 area of the dialog box. The rule indicates that it will act on messages that are from the specified account and that have the text Free Money or Guaranteed Results in the message.

You can modify a rule at any time after you create it. Modifying a rule is much like creating one. To modify a rule, on the Home tab, click Tools, Manage Rules And Alerts to open the Rules And Alerts dialog box. Select the rule that you want to modify, and then click Change Rule to display a menu of editing options. If you choose Edit Rule Settings on the menu, Outlook 2010 presents the same options you saw when you created the rule, and you can work with them the same way. Click Rename Rule to change the name of the rule, or click an action to add the selected action to the rule (retaining any existing actions).