Outlook E-mail Sorting Incorrectly

Question

Greetings Support/Community,

I'm using MS Outlook 2016 64-bit (Version 1803) with Windows 10 Enterprise. 

My job comes with the need to sort e-mails on a very specific basis and into 2-3 dozen folder's so I can track and task daily messages quickly and efficiently. 

I have thus created 2-3 dozen rules. A large percentage are with specifics in the subject, as we use template style subjects with those specific portions for ease of use. Another large percentage is sorted by who they are from and also who the emails are send to. 

Almost all of these are working flawlessly but a small percentage of e-mails that don't fit any of these specific rules are being funneled into random folders for seemingly no reason. 

I've checked the rules regarding those folders and any general rules for clues but they don't correspond and any meaningful way. So I started by changing the Ordering of the rules and suddenly the folders these extra e-mails are getting lumped into is changing. Again I have checked the rules to see if it is catching something it should not but the case seems to simply be a matter of Ordering of rules and the e-mails defaulting to those folders for no logical reason. 

Has anyone else experienced these issues? Is there a fix? Someone recommended on another thread, not specifically my issue, to rebuild rules but my rules don't seem to be the problem but instead there seems to be some Ordering glitch going on here. 

Thanks for any help!

Answer 1

Hi Tyler,

We haven't heard back from you. Would you mind telling us how it goes now?

Best regards,

Coldwell

Answer 2

Hi Tyler,

Thanks for your post. I tried to reproduce it in our lab, but failed. Would you please send us the screenshot of the rule for further investigation? It will help a lot for troubleshooting it.

Best regards,

Coldwell

Answer 3

Greetings Coldwell,

I appreciate your response. I will try to more clearly explain. 

I have checked my rules and they don't seem to be over-lapping or interfering with each other. 

The problem seems to be that at a certain length of Rules(down the list of those I've created) e-mails that don't apply to a specific rule are pushing into a folder for no reason. 

I've checked all rules and I've cross referenced e-mail subject titles and who they are to/from in order to discern the issue. 

The strange part I mentioned that seems to be the core of the problem, and why I think it is a bug/glitch, is that these stray e-mails will go to other folders(because of no written rules) based off of priority on my list of Rules and nothing else it seems. 

All of my rules have STOP PROCESSING RULES as a standard. So the fact that these e-mails, which are in no way acquainted with the rules set to order them, move into a seemingly random folder based off of which rule. 

Some of my rules use _ to follow specific titles: If subject includes cd_cd move to folder cd-cd. Is there perhaps some meaning for using _ and - in rules that I don't know?

Thanks again.

Answer 4

Hi Tyler,

Thanks for you post. According to your description, just some of the dozens of rules don't work properly. Have you checked out which ones are not working correctly? If yes, please us the screenshot of the rules that do not work correctly for further investigation. If not, I suggest that disable the rules which work fine, and find out the ones don't work fine.

You mentioned that after changing the priorities of the rule by changing the order of the rules, please kindly note that this will change the routing of your emails. Based on your description and my analyse, there could be some conflicts between the rules. Please check the rules again to make sure that the rules are ended by stopping processing more rules as the following picture shows after move the related emails to the specific folder.

Best regards,

Coldwell