Rule in Outlook is not working

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Hi Margaret McCormick

Thank you for reaching out to Microsoft Q&A forum

From your screenshot, the rule condition is not actually checking the Subject line, it’s checking the message header (“with ‘CO ’ or ‘CO’ or ‘CO:’ or ‘Change Order’ in the message header”)

That’s why it’s catching messages that don’t have those terms in the subject: many emails will contain “co” somewhere in their headers, so the rule ends up matching far more mail than intended.

So, you can try the instructions below to see if it can help you:

1. Go to File → Manage Rules & Alerts.
2. Select your rule → Change Rule → Edit Rule Settings.
3. In the conditions page:
   • Uncheck anything like “with specific words in the message header” (that’s the broad match).
   • Check “with specific words in the subject” (or “subject includes”, depending on what your wizard shows).
4. Click the underlined “specific words” and add your terms as separate entries (don’t type quotes and don’t type or):
   • CO:
   • CO (CO + a trailing space)
   • Change Order: Avoid using plain CO by itself unless you truly mean “any subject containing the letters c-o anywhere”, because that can match lots of unrelated subjects (and definitely lots of headers).
5. Keep your action as “move a copy to the CHANGE ORDERS folder” (that part is fine).
6. Use Run Rules Now to test against a small set (or your Inbox) after saving, so you can confirm it only grabs the intended subjects.

Hope my answer will help you.

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