Sorting Outgoing E-mails

When you use rules to sort your outgoing e-mails into folders you’ll notice that you can actually only “move a copy” to that folder. This rule is quite unclear and actualy contradicts itself; does it move or does it copy? Well it copies and when you use the rule by default you’ll end up with duplicates which is probably not what you want; you want it to move! This is still possible but it involves modifying another options and carefully craft your e-mail rules.

Turn off the generic save option

Since we’re going to sort the outgoing e-mails by using rules we’re going all the way and actually also manage saving all outgoing messages by using rules. So we can turn off the generic option “Save copies of messages in Sent Items folder” which is on by default. You can find this option in;
Tools-> Options-> tab Preferences-> button E-mail Options…

Create a rule to sort your outgoing mail

In this example we’ll create a rule to store all messages sent to John Doe in the a folder named “John Doe” which is a subfolder of the Sent Items folder.

1. Select Tools-> Rules and Alerts…
2. Select “Start from a blank rule”
3. Select “Check messages after sending” and press Next
4. In the Step 1 section select “sent to people or distribution list”
5. In the Step 2 section click “people or distribution list” and select John Doe from your address book and press Next
6. In the Step 1 section select “move a copy to the specified folder”
7. In the Step 2 section click “specified” and select the John Doe folder
8. In the Step 1 section select “stop processing more rules”
   This is important or you’ll end up with duplicates again!
9. Press Next and then Next again (unless you want to set exceptions)
10. Name the rule, verify that “Turn on this rule” is selected and press Finish

You can of course create additional rules to move messages to other people to different folders by repeating the above steps but note that you each time add the action “stop processing more rules” to the rule.

Create a rule to catch the rest of your mail

Currently we’re only saving the mails we’re sorting to other folders. Of course you want to store the rest of your outgoing messages to the Sent Items folder. We can do this by creating a generic rule; a rule without conditions.

1. Select Tools-> Rules and Alerts…
2. Select “Start from a blank rule”
3. Select “Check messages after sending” and press Next
4. Without selecting anything select Next.
5. You’ll get a dialog saying;
   “This rule will be applied to every message you send. Is this correct?”
   Press Yes
6. In the Step 1 section select “move a copy to the specified folder”
7. In the Step 2 section click “specified” and select the Sent Items folder
8. Press Next and then Next again (unless you want to set exceptions)
9. Name the rule, verify that “Turn on this rule” is selected and press Finish

Sort your rules

After creating the rules you must make sure that the rules are sorted correctly! You must set the generic rule to be executed last with above it the personalized sorting rules.

You can use the arrows in the Rules and Alerts dialog to sort your rules.