Hi Vanguard:

Thanks for your continuing help with this. All the stuff you mentioned
makes sense and I'm pretty sure I'm doing things right. See my response,
further up on the thread, which lists my actual rules.


"VanguardLH" wrote in message
...
Dab wrote:

Hi:

I'm a pretty advanced Outlook user but I just can't figure this out and
I've
been trying for years!

I created some rules that check for a particular condition and if the
condition is met, the email is moved to a particular folder.

The last rule in the stack moves the remaining messages to a 'default'
folder. All of the destination folders are in the root folders of the
account.

Here's the weird part: I've discovered, after may years, that rules that
include moves to folders don't work if the 'stop processing more rules'
is
not included in the rule. If I don't include the 'stop processing more
rules' in the rules, none of them work except the last one which moves
everything into the default folder (note that the last rule will work
whether the 'stop processing more rules' is included or not). If I put
the
'stop processing more rules' in the rules, they all work, except for the
last one that is supposed to move what's left over to the default
folder -
it doesn't work whether the 'stop processing more rules' is included or
not.

Any suggestions on why this is happening?

Outlook 2003 connected to an Exchange 2003 server.

The actions of the rules are OR'ed together. The stop-clause is the
short-circuit OR condition; that is, if one condition in an OR
expressions is met then the other conditions need not be tested, so once
the stop-clause is enacted (on a rule that fires) then no more rules are
OR'ed against this rule. So you have to think about the flow through
your rules. The actions of one rule gets OR'ed against the actions of
the next rule unless the prior rule has the stop-clause. AND'ing is
performed within the clauses of a rule. OR'ing is performed by using
multiple rules.

Rules without the stop-clause allow following rules to undo or modify
the effect of prior rules. Rules are executed in order, not in
parallel. No matter how long it takes for all contacts to be searched
to match in a rule's condition, the next rule doesn't get tested until
the current rule completes testing (and possibly its action). They are
linear in execution.

If any rule fires that has the stop-clause action, processing will never
reach your catch-all rule at the end of the rules list. That means you
will need to include the actions of the catch-all rule in any prior
rules where it should apply. For example, at the start of my rules are
whitelisting rules with a stop clause. If found whitelisted, none of
the other rules need be exercised against that e-mail. At the end of my
rules is a catch-all rule to save a copy of received e-mails in a
Received Items subfolder (under the Sent Items folder). Because the
whitelist rules have the stop clause, I have to add the action of the
catch-all rule (to save a copy of received e-mails) into the whitelist
rules. If whitelisted, I want to save a copy of the received e-mail in
my Received Items folder. If the e-mail survives the gamut of blacklist
and spam rules thereafter then the catch-all rule saves a copy of the
received e-mail.

If you use the stop-clause but want the actions of subsequent rules to
also apply, you have to merge the actions of those rules into one rule
that has the stop clause. Otherwise, once the prior rule fires, its
stop clause means you never get to any subsequent rules.

I also have a contacts rule (to whitelist my known senders). It is at
the top of my rules list along with other whitelisting rules. Once the
sender is known, and the actions for that whitelisting rule get
exercised (like moving the e-mail to another folder), no further rules
are to get exercised against that e-mail. So I have to merge both the
contacts whitelisting rule and the catch-all save-a-copy rule in the one
whitelisting rule - because the catch-all rule will never be reached.

I've not had a rule time out. I have had a rule take a very long time
to complete. If a rule inspects the body of an e-mail, that could take
a lot longer than inspecting just the headers. If you got 100 new
e-mails and each was 10KB in size then that's 1MB of text to search
through, and if you specify multiple keywords (which are AND'ed) then it
takes a lot longer. And if you have multiple rules scanning the bodies
of e-mails then it takes even longer to complete processing all
applicable rules. You'll see Outlook complete its mail poll but the
items won't show up in the folders until a long lag for which rule
processing has completed. That's why I do not have any rules looking
into the body of e-mails. Having to match a sender against thousands of
contacts would also take a while but I don't see that the rule would
timeout.