MS/Outlook won't let me export rules

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MS/Outlook won't let me export rules

Dan Hartford 0

I have MS/ Outlook 2016 on two computers. One of the mailboxes is a GoDaddy MS/Exchange acocunt but the remaining accounts are POP3 accounts. I created a bunch of rules for computer A to move/copy messages to PST files. These rules are marked as 'On this Computer Only'. even though the set up is the same on computer B, I had to duplcated all the rules for computer B.

When on computer A, the rules related to computer B are marked as in error and deselected and vice-versa.

My problem (which is recent) is that I can no longer export my rules. When I try it tells me that it can't because there is an error and to look for underlined words in the rule. Every rule has the account name underlined and the PST folder name for the move/copy operation also underlined. How do I find what it is complaining about?

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Answer 1

Faery Fu-MSFT 19,751 Moderator

Hi @Dan Hartford ,

According to my research, the exported rules file (rwz) will work just fine when you use it with the pst-file that you exported it from. It will not work when you import it in into a newly created pst-file since the folder identifiers would be different or the folder could not exist at all.

It is recommended that you back up the original pst file and copy it to the same location on another computer.

After importing your rules, you might need to relink all the "move to folder" rules to the correct folder again, even though they might seem still correct. To do this, select the rule and then click on the blue folder link. This will open a folder dialog where you can select the correct folder for the rule to move the messages to.

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Dan Hartford 0 Reputation points

2023-11-27T17:01:23.4033333+00:00

@Faery Fu-MSFT Thank you for your response, however your answer, while probably valid, did not address my question. The problem is that I was not able to perform the "export" of the rules as it tells me that a rule is in error and therefore it can't perform the export.

This started with a message that the rules on the server were corrupt and could not be read (the server being an exchange server by GoDaddy). The rules as viewed on the exchange server through a web browser looked OK, however when viewed on my Outlook 2016 client there was one who's title was jibberish. Even though I tried to delete the bad rule it kept coming back the next time I opened Outlook.

I then deleted all the rules using on the server as well as on my Outlook client and imported a set of rules I had from 6 months ago before the problem occured. This seemed to work OK so after bringing the rules up to date on computer A, I tried to export the rules again in order to have a backup with most recent changes. This is where I go the aforementioned error.

All the server side rules as well as the local rules for computer A were marked as valid and in fact were performing their actions as desired. However, all the client side rules for computer B were marked as in error and were uncheked. This is when I posted my original question.

I have since solved the problem by booting up computer B (laptop I only use when traveling) and fixing the "account" field on all the computer B client side rules. After these changes propagated to the server and then to computer A I was able to export the rules without error. So, my problem is no longer present. But thanks for giving it a shot.
Faery Fu-MSFT 19,751 Reputation points Moderator

2023-11-29T08:08:07.52+00:00

Hi @Dan Hartford ,

I’m glad you solved the problem by yourself. It sounds like you had some issues with the account field on the client side rules for computer B.
Dan Hartford 0 Reputation points

2023-11-29T17:10:20.0166667+00:00

According to the original error message I was getting whenever I launced Outlook on my local machine, the problem was that the server side rules file was corrupted and could not be read. It then seems that the corruption migrated down to my client versions of Outlook. When looking at the rules on my local Outlook, the last rule name was made up of all sorts of sepcial symbols like squares and triangles and that rule could not be edited or deleted as it kept coming back from the server and couldn't be deleted on the server as it didn't show up in the list of rules (probably due to the corruption).

But, I found a set of steps on the web that allowed me to clear all the rules from both the server and all clinets. The problem that prompted this thread was that after I cleared all the rules and then Imported rules from an older RWZ file I had from several months ago and updated them, Outlook would not let me export them again.

Anyway, thanks for the help

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MS/Outlook won't let me export rules

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