If you’re like me, you’re innundated with tons and tons of communication.
Snail mail, junk mail, voicemail (home, cell phone, business line, VoIP), live voice calls!, rss feeds, email, spam, and listserv email lists…and on and on and on.

 
Sometimes you just want to TURN IT OFF! Or at least just a channel or two — like when one of those community email lists goes bizzerk over an off-topic post that ignites the passion of every single subscriber-hermit that has never ever responded or contibuted to the list in decades….”long time listener, first time REPLY-ALLer…”

 
One simple feature of most email programs is to set-up a quick filter or rule that will handle that email thread the way you want…even making it so that you never ever see another message regarding that topic again. Here’s how to do it in Microsoft Outlook. . .

 
 

You’ll be really glad you created a rule or two to get rid of all that clutter. Think about it this way, if you waste 3-4 minutes a day of wading through unwanted, junk email, that’s means you are literally sitting in front of your computer for ONE WHOLE 24-HOUR DAY 100% UNPRODUCTIVELY. That’s literally wasting away a full 24-hour day each year.

 
Who wants to do that? Not me! So take the time to set-up some rules today, and you’ll be glad you did later when you have a couple of extra minutes to breath each week. When was the last time that you had a entire day available to waste away doing completely unnecessary or unwanted activities?

 
1. In Outlook, go to TOOLS > RULES AND ALERTS . . .

 

 

2. The RULES & ALERTS Dialog Box will open and you should select “NEW RULE…”

 

 

3. The RULES WIZARD will open and here we can create a rule to DELETE A CONVERSATION. For this rule, you will be able to indicate “SPECIFIC WORDS” to use as a filter to apply this rule.
 

 

 

4. In the next dialog box, you can enter the specific keywords that Outlook should look for in order to apply this rule. Just type in a phrase and click ADD. If you want more than one phrase to look for, you can add as many options as you want here.

 

 

 

 

Each time you ADD a phrase you’ll see it drop down into the “Search List” list. Click “OK” when you’re done telling Outlook what to look for.
 

 

 

5. You’ll now see the Rules Wizard update the Rule Description with the keywords you’ve indicated. Click “FINISH”
 

 

 

6. You’re done setting up the rule. First, Click “APPLY” to make the rule “live” in Outlook. Next, you can click “OK” to exit and be happy.

 

If you want to run the rule now and filter your email box, click “RUN RULES NOW…” at the top of the dialog box.
 

 

 

7. In the RUN RULES NOW dialog box, select your newly created rule in the checkbox list. Make sure to indicate the RUN IN FOLDER option using the “BROWSE…” button as well as the “Include subfolders” option.

 

 

If you’re ready to clean out the junk in your email box, click “RUN NOW”

 

 

 

 

8. Sit back and relax while Outlook finds all emails with the keywords within them and then applies the new “delete” rule to all your unwanted emails.

 

 



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