Separate mail coming from multiple POP3 accounts

By default, when you configure multiple POP3 account in Outlook, all the emails will be delivered to the same Inbox folder. Differentiating between the various accounts might be hard and it might not be directly clear which account was used to retrieve the email. This guide introduces several techniques which you can use to sort your email based on the account you have received it with.

While this guide is mainly focused on separating mails received from different accounts, the techniques can be used to sort mail based on other criteria as well.

If you are using Outlook 2007, I would recommend immediately skipping to the last technique in this guide.

Add Accounts column

A very easy and quick method to see which account was used to retrieve the email is by adding the Accounts column to your view.
To do this open the Fields Chooser;
Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007: View-> Arrange By-> Custom…-> Fields…
Outlook 2002/XP and previous: View-> Current View-> Customize Current View…-> Fields…

  1. In the “Select available fields from:” drop down list select “All Mail fields”
  2. Select “Email Account” and press the “Add ->” button
  3. You can move the column higher or lower in the list to order it to your needs
  4. If you have a lot of fields enabled you might needs to add additional lines when you have “single-line layout” disabled (only applies to Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007). You can set the amount of lines to use at the top of the current dialog. To enable “single-line layout”;
    1. Press OK to close the “Show Fields” dialog
    2. Press “Other Settings…”
    3. At the bottom disable the option;
      Outlook 2007: “Use compact layout in widths smaller than x characters”
      Outlook 2003: “Use multi-line layout in widths smaller than x characters”
    4. Once disabled, you can select “Always use single-line layout”
      This option works best when you have your Reading Pane at the bottom or when you have a widescreen monitor with a high resolution.
  5. OK yourself out of any open dialog.

The changes are instant to the folder that you are in. If you want the column added to every folder you can do so by modifying the default Messages view. See this blog post on how to do that.

Arrange By E-mail Account

There is a special view setting in Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007 that allow you to arrange your emails by E-mail Account. While on its own this might be a little clumsy when you have a lot of emails in that folder, it is a handy view setting when you combine it for instance with Search Folders like for instance with my “Today’s Unread Mail” tip or a filtered view (when you filter on something different then the account.

To use choose;
View-> Arrange By-> E-mail Account
I would recommend to also enable “View in Groups” when using this view;
View-> Arrange By-> Show in Groups

The changes are instant to the folder that you are in. If you want the arrange setting to apply to every folder you can do so by modifiying the default Messages view. See this blog post on how to do that.

Automatic Formatting

If highlighting is enough for you, you can achieve this by using Automatic Formatting. This way a mail from a certain account will be shown in a different color in your mail list.
To do this open the Automatic Formatting options;
Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007: View-> Arrange By-> Custom…-> Automatic Formatting…
Outlook 2002/XP and previous: View-> Current View-> Customize Current View…-> Automatic Formatting…

Now we create an Automatic Formatting Rule;

  1. Press the Add button
  2. Name the rule. The easiest is to name this after the account that this rule will apply to. See this blog post on how to lookup or change your account name.
  3. Press the Font… button to assign font properties to make the message strike to you. This can be a different font, a larger size, different text color or some text effects.
  4. Press the Condition… button
  5. In the new dialog press the Advanced tab
  6. Press the Field button and from the section “All Mail fields” choose “E-mail Account”
  7. Set the condition to “is (exactly)” and set the value to the name of your email account
  8. Press the “Add to list” button
  9. Press OK to close the open dialog
  10. Repeat the steps for any additional mail account that you want to highlight. You can use different font settings for each of them.
  11. When done creating rules, OK yourself out of the open dialogs

The changes are instant to the folder that you are in. If you want the highlighting to apply to every folder you can do so by modifiying the default Messages view. See this blog post on how to do that. For more information about color coding your email see this guide.

Filtered Views

Creating a filtered view is a very flexible way of separating your POP3 messages received from different accounts. By using filtered views you can still receive all your mails to a single folder but have the benefit of hiding the mails from the other accounts.
To do this open the Custom View Organizer;
All Outlook versions except Outlook 2003: View-> Current View-> Define Views…
Outlook 2003: View-> Arrange By-> Current View-> Define Views…

  1. Press the New… button
  2. Name the view. The easiest is to name this after the account that this view will apply to. See this blog post on how to lookup or change your account name.
  3. Select: Table
  4. Select: All Mail and Post folders
  5. Press OK
  6. Press Filter…
  7. In the new dialog press the Advanced tab
  8. Press the Field button and from the section “All Mail fields” choose “E-mail Account”
  9. Set the condition to “is (exactly)” and set the value to the name of your email account
  10. Press the “Add to list” button
  11. Press OK to close the open “Filter” dialog
  12. Press OK to close the “Customize View” dialog
  13. Repeat the steps to create additional views for each account that you have
  14. When done creating view press the Close dialog

To easily switch between views I would recommend enabling the Advanced toolbar via;
View-> Toolbars-> Advanced

This will give you a toolbar where you have a drop down list to easliy select your view.

Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2003 users have an additional option to show a view selector in the Navigation pane;
Outlook 2007: View-> Navigation Pane-> Current View Pane
Outlook 2003: View-> Arrange By-> Show Views In Navigation Pane

The changes are instant when you switch to a certain view. As we have defined out own view which applies to all mail and post folders, you can use this view in every folder within your mailbox.

Rules

Using rules is probably the most common method to sort your email. You can also create a rule that does something special to a message (like to move it to another folder) when it is being received via a specific account.

In this example, let’s create a rule that moves a message from a sepecifc account to another folder;

Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007

  1. Select your Inbox folder
  2. Tools-> Rules and Alerts
  3. On the E-Mail Rules tab press “New Rule…”
  4. From “Start from a blank rule” select “Check messages when they arrive”
  5. Press Next
  6. From the list of conditions choose “through the specified account”
    You’ll see the condition added to the bottom field
  7. In the bottom field click on the word “specified”
  8. Select the account for which you want to move the emails to another folder and press OK
    See this blog post on how to lookup or change your account name.
  9. Press Next
  10. From the list of actions choose “move it to the specified folder”
    You’ll see the condition added to the bottom field
  11. In the bottom field click on the word “specified”
  12. Select the folder you want to move the email messages from that account to move to. You can also create a new folder. Naming the folder after the account name would be recommended.
  13. Press Next
  14. Don’t select any exceptions
  15. Press Next
  16. Name the rule. Easiest is to name it; “Move messages for <account name>”
  17. Verify that the rule is turned on.
  18. If you want to move the messages that were already received via that account and are currently in your Inbox folder, select the option;
    “Run this rule now on messages already in “Inbox”
  19. Press Finish
  20. Repeat the steps to create additional rules for each account that you have
  21. Press OK to close the Rules and Alerts dialog

Outlook 2002/XP and previous
The process for previous versions of Outlook is very similar, with the biggest change that you need to choose Tools-> Rules Wizard…

Outgoing messages an be sorted by a rule in much the same way. You need to disable the default saving of outgoing messages first though. See this guide for more details.

The changes are not instant as the rule will only execute for new mails that are being received after you have created the rule. If you want to sort the messages that you already have received you must manually execute the rule;
Tools-> Rules and Alerts-> Run Rules Now…

Search Folders

Search Folders is a technique that can be used in Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007 and are a great way to find all messages anywhere in your mailbox which which match certain criteria. You can then manage these messages as they were located in the same folder and sort them with additional techniques like color coding.

In this example, let’s create a Search Folder that displays all messages received via a specific account;

  1. Choose File-> New-> Search Folder…
  2. Custom-> Create a custom Search Folder
  3. Press button “Choose…”
  4. Name the Search Folder. I would recommend it naming after your mail account.
    See this blog post on how to lookup or change your account name.
  5. Press button “Criteria…”
  6. In the new dialog press the Advanced tab
  7. Press the Field button and from the section “All Mail fields” choose “E-mail Account”
  8. Set the condition to “is (exactly)” and set the value to the name of your email account
  9. Press the “Add to list” button
  10. Press OK to close the open “Search Folder Criteria” dialog
  11. Press OK to close the “Custom Search Folder” dialog
  12. Repeat the steps to create additional Search Folders for each account that you have
  13. Press OK to close the “New Search Folder” dialog.

The changes are instant when you select your newly created Search Folder. However, depending on the size of your mailbox, it could take a while before the view is constructed. To speed up the process you can use the “Browse…” button when creating the Search Folder to select only the folders that receive emails (for instance, exclude your RSS folders and Sent Items folder). To customize a Search Folder, right click on it and choose “Customize this Search Folder…”.

Directly assign the account a Folder Set

A new and very cool new feature (it’s in my top 5 of best new Outlook 2007 features) in Outlook 2007 is that you can directly assign an account its own dedicated folder set. This dedicated folder set contains the following default folders;

  • Deleted Items
  • Inbox
  • Junk E-mail
  • Outbox
  • Sent Items
  • Search Folders

Because the account has now its own folder set, all the emails are automatically stored in the corresponding folders without the need of configuring anything else like for instance rules. So also your Sent Items are automatically separated by using this technique.

Setting it up is also very easy;

  1. Open your Account Settings via Tools-> Account Settings…
  2. Select the account which you want to redirect to its own folder set
  3. Press “Change Folder”
  4. Press “New Outlook Data File…”
  5. Select “Office Outlook Personal Folders File (.pst)”
  6. Give the pst-file a name and set the location where you want to store your pst-file.
    I recommend to store the pst-file in a location that is also included in your backups. See this guide for more information on that.
    I also recommend to name the pst-file after your account so <account name>.pst
    See this blog post on how to lookup or change your account name.
  7. In the new dialog that pops-up, give an Outlook display name to the newly created pst-file. Again, I recommend naming it after your account name but this time you can leave out “.pst” at the end
  8. Press OK to close the naming dialog
  9. Select the Inbox folder in the newly created pst-file
  10. Press OK to close the New E-mail Delivery Location dialog
  11. Repeat the steps to create additional folder sets for each account that you have
  12. Press Close to close the Account Settings Dialog.

In contrast to using rules to separate your email, you’ll still be getting an envelope in your Notification Area when a new mail arrives. You can create additional folders and rules to further organize your mails. The accounts still share the Contacts, Calendar, Journal, Notes and Tasks folder of your main folder set. You can of course create additional ones if you want. Flagged items will also show up in the To-Do Bar.

The changes are instant although you still need to move your already received emails. I would recommend creating a Search Folder for that in your original pst-file where the messages were received.


Last modified: June 13, 2008


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