Really, How Hard Can Email Sorting Be?
I've been using Microsoft Outlook for a long time -- since the OL97 days, in fact -- and I've gone through all the different incarnations of the nefarious Outlook/Inbox Rules Wizards. Currently, I'm using Outlook 2003 at home and work, with one test system running Outlook 2007 at home.
While a number of improvements have been made in the appearance, functionality, security and robustness of the Outlook application over the years, the changes that I have most needed have continued to go missing: a well mannered, proper functioning, flexible yet powerful Rules Wizard.
The last major update to this component came with Outlook 2000, IMO. And for all the other neat looking parts of Outlook 2007, what I really, really, really wanted was a simple to use Rules Editor with export capability, among other things. Unfortunately, very little appears to have changed in this regard, if anything, in the Beta 2 release of Outlook 2007 that I looked at.
I have lots and lots of rules (99, actually) because I get lots and lots of email daily, from plenty of sources, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person in this position. (Okay, so maybe I'm the only person dumb enough to want to sort all of it into different folders for different reasons, but that's supposed to be the beauty of technology...)
So that there is some context for my complaint, let me explain the key areas of dissatisfaction that I experience with the message sorting component of Outlook:
- Why isn't there an easy way to select all the rules at once when making use of the "Run Rules Now" functionality? Did the developers forget about CTRL-A?
- Why is it so hard to control where rules will have an AND clause, and where they will have an OR clause? (Try to make a single rule where the message was sent FROM: a specific person OR the subject contains a specific word, for example. I dare you.)
- Why do rules suddenly stop working? Without error. Then you have to delete and recreate them. This problem has diminished considerably for me since moving to OL2003 and Ex2003, but I have heard others complain of the problem even with this combination of software.
- Why can't I grab a couple of rules and move them up or down as a unit? Do you know how tedious it is to move 10 rules out of 99 from the bottom to the top? (You can select multiple rules, but then the movement arrows go gray at that point.)
- And why can't I merge any rules? (This is really an extension of complaint #2)
- I have dual-core systems with 2GB+ RAM as my desktops (one 64-bit, one 32-bit), and I'm running 2GB of RAM on the server with Exchange Enterprise Edition, so why am I still stuck with a silly 64KB limit for email rules that are stored on the Exchange Server?
It's 2006 for goodness sake.
- Speaking of Exchange, why are POP3 rules more flexible and reliable than the ones that go against an Exchange Server?
- This is probably more an issue with Exchange that it is with Outlook and the Rules Wizard, but I would really appreciate being able to distinguish mail that was sent to a particular alias of my Exchange account without the rule converting the user@domain to my full Exchange name (which means that it will apply to all mail destined for me). And using the header option just means that the rule will work inconsistently at best.
- Why are the rules that parse through headers so feeble? (Try setting up rules that only use a portion of text from an username, and see how long it continues to work)
- Why isn't it the default that processing stops at the first rule that matches, or why isn't there a way to set that behavior globally? Isn't it more likely that I'd want only one rule to act on a particular message? Instead, I have 90+ rules where 99% of them have to use the "Stop Processing Subsequent Rules" option, which adds to the size of each rule, wasting precious space in my 64KB rule limit, as previously mentioned in #6.
- Since there's a COPY mail option as well as a MOVE mail option, why even have the silly default behavior of #10? Just let us pick the COPY option if we want more than one rule to act on a particular message...
- When using a PST, why does every last rule break if you move the physical location of your PST file, when the logical location of the destination folders is still the same?
- Why can't we export the rules to text, XML or some other easily edited format, where we can make group/bulk changes, and then re-import them? That would especially help with the lack of sorting mentioned in #4, and the lack of merging in #5.
- Okay, so I want to setup some rules where mail is acted upon depending on the membership of a distribution list (whether client-side or server-side). Outlook can handle if the message is TO: a DL, but if you try FROM: a DL, it wants to expand the DL at rule creation time, which not only means that the rule cannot be dynamic, but it again affects your overall rule size as per #6.
- Why do server-side rules sometimes get corrupted, even with Exchange 2003, so that you have to clean out all rules, re-import the entire rule base, then upload the correct ones again? (It's much better than it was with OL2000 and Ex5.5, but that's not saying as much as you'd think).
- Why is it that the awesome Advanced Find functionality of Outlook cannot be used to generate a rule once you've obtained your search results? This would virtually eliminate the silly trial and error that occurs today when you're trying to create a complex rule.
- Why no bulk changes to rules? For instance, I'd love to be able to select a couple of rules, and change their destination in a single shot to being some new folder, or add a Display Alert to the rules collectively.
For what it's worth, one of the best email applications when it came to rules management was the old Eudora. In the good ol' days of Eudora 1.4, rules management was a breeze, and life was good. You could judiciously mix your ORs with your ANDs and make things go wherever you wanted, however you wanted. The more recent version of Eudora are, unfortunately, buggy and unstable, and are beaten by Outlook in virtually every other way, so I can only wax nostalgic about the good old days.
Yes, as of today's count, I have 99 rules on my home system, and most of them exist because of the deficiencies of the Rules Wizard. There are plenty of rules that I could consolidate if the rules allowed more flexible use of OR and AND, among other things.
Over the years, I have looked for 3rd party solutions to my dilemma, and for a time I used InboxRULES from ORNIC. While I appreciated the extra functionality, it was a little unwieldy to maintain, and not at all portable (certainly not without a cost).
As much as I hate the idea of getting an external product, I might have to look at something like MAPILab Rules for Exchange and try to tackle this problem from the server side -- at least at home.
If I were more development minded these days, I would seriously consider building my own add-on, but whatever inclination I possess is challenged by both time and skill. Until then, I wait, and continue to periodically evaluate other email clients to determine whether or not they can replace Outlook for my needs. My last review and evaluation was conducted in early 2005, and I saw nothing that would handle all the mail I have from both a historical and volume standpoint, nor offer better integration with the rest of my productivity needs. We'll have to see what 2007 brings...
BTW, if you want to get more information on Outlook Rules, this SlipStick link is a good one to check out.
Update (08 Oct 2006): I remembered to add one more gripe to the list: Advanced Find...