Outlook 2010 executes rules for incoming messages when they arrive in the Inbox, whether on the server or locally (depending on whether the rules are client-side or server-side). Outlook 2010 executes rules for outgoing messages when the messages arrive in the Sent Items folder.

As mentioned earlier, the order in which rules are listed in Outlook 2010 determines how Outlook 2010 applies them. In some situations, the sequence could be important. Perhaps you have one rule that moves high-priority messages to a separate folder and another rule that notifies you when high-priority messages arrive. For the latter rule to work properly, it needs to execute before the one that moves the messages, because the notification rule won't execute if the messages are no longer in the Inbox.

You can control the order of Outlook 2010 rules easily by taking the following steps:

Figure 1. You can control execution order for rules by rearranging the rules list.

In certain cases, you might want your message rules to stop being processed altogether. Perhaps someone has sent you a very large message that is causing your connection to time out or is taking a long time to download. You would like to create a rule to delete the message without downloading it, but you don't want any of your other rules to execute. In this case, you would place a new rule at the top of the list and define it so that the last action it takes is to stop processing any other rules. In effect, this allows you to bypass your other rules without going through the trouble of disabling them.

You can also use the Stop Processing More Rules action to control rule execution in other situations. To stop Outlook 2010 from executing other rules when a message meets a specific condition, include Stop Processing More Rules as the last action for the rule. You'll find this action in the What Do You Want To Do With The Message? list in the Rules Wizard.

In some cases, you might want to turn off message rules so that they don't execute. Perhaps you use a rule to do routine cleanup on your mail folders but don't want the rule to run automatically. Or perhaps you want to create a rule to use only once or twice but you would like to keep it in case you need it again later. In those cases, you can disable the rule. To do this, on the Home tab, click Rules, Manage Rules And Alerts, and then clear the check box for that rule in the list. Only those rules with check boxes that are selected will apply to incoming or outgoing messages.

If you don't plan to use a rule again, you can remove it by opening the Rules And Alerts dialog box, selecting the rule, and then clicking Delete.

Sharing Rules with Others

By default, Outlook 2010 stores server-side rules on the computer running Exchange Server and stores client-side rules on your local system. Regardless of where your message rules are stored, you can share them with others by exporting the rules to a file. You can then send the file as an email attachment or place it on a network share (or a local share) to allow other users to access it. You can also export the rules to create a backup of them for safekeeping or in case you need to move your Outlook 2010 rules to a new computer, as explained in the next section.

Follow these steps to export your message rules to a file:

You can export your rules in any of four formats, depending on the version of Outlook used by the people with whom you want to share your rules. If you need to share with various users, export using the earliest version of Outlook. Later versions will be able to import the rules because they are forward-compatible.