Filtering NMU Announcements in Outlook

NMU faculty and staff receive many email announcements throughout the day that end up in their inbox with the rest of their mail. Outlook can use rules to help filter such messages. Here are instructions on how to create a rule that to identify the announcements and filter them into a folder.

The idea is NMU announcements are usually sent to multiple employee groups at one time. By setting up a rule that looks for employee group’s email list address, it has effectively identified an announcement and can then perform whatever action you want it to take, such as automatically moving out of your inbox and into a folder.

1. Right click on an announcement message that was sent to multiple employee groups and choose “Rules”, “Create Rule” from the menu.
   
2. Check the “Sent to” and select an employee group’s email list address from the pull down menu.
   
3. Check the “Move the item to the folder” check box and click the “Select Folder” button.
   
4. Click the “New” button to create a new folder and type in a name for the folder such as Announcements. Then click “OK”.
   
5. Click “OK” and “OK” again to create the rule.
6. You will get prompted that the rule has been created. Click the “Run this rule now…” checkbox and click “OK” to have the rule run now on all messages in the current folder.
   
7. Any messages that meet the criteria are then moved into the new folder.

 
Hint: You can also create similar rules to filter messages from other people into folders using “From:” field to select them rather than the "Sent to" field so your mail from people you correspond with often is automatically organized for you.