The above features allow for a more dynamic sorting mechanism and can also greatly reduce the amount of folders and depth of subfolders that you need, while still being able to quickly get what you need. These options often allow you to use the same conditions as that you can set with rules.

Multiple techniques to reduce rulesĬombining rules and using aliases to reduce the amount of rules needed is a first option, but Outlook has many other features to help you sort or quickly find back your emails. Personally, I always recommend people to revise their rules and sorting method when they reach somewhere between 15 and 20 rules. The result is that your list of rules will be hard to manage, it is easy to end up with duplicate rules and messages could get duplicated or end up in the wrong folder because of conflicting or incorrectly sorted rules. Rules are a great way to sort your incoming emails but you can indeed quickly go overboard with this feature as well. For instance, there is no easy way to search or filter them and sorting/positioning them takes forever with pressing the Move Up/Move Down buttons repeatedly.Īm I pushing the limits of Outlook here? How many rules would you recommend and which alternatives do I have? I'm using the Rules and Alerts function extensively and I must have over a 100 rules by now to sort my incoming and outgoing emails.įor that amount of rules, the Rules Manager/Editor really is too small and cumbersome to use.

Create rules in outlook 2016