OWA Rules FAQ

Request email assistance

Why would I use Email Filtering?

By sorting your emails you can keep your Inbox from getting cluttered. For example, you take all the emails from a mailing list or a professor and automatically move them to a specific folder.

What can email filtering do for me?

Outlook offers many different email rule options. These include forwarding email to other users, deleting unwanted email, sending email from a particular person to a specific folder, placing email from a particular person into categories and junk email filtering.

Some of the rules that you create will be available from any computer because they are server based rules rather than client based rules. There will however be rules that will not move between computers.

Is the change/update of filters immediate?

No. The changes are immediately made to the ldap servers on our email cluster but may take up to 15 minutes to be used by the mail server itself.

How do I know my filter is working?

Within 15 minutes of saving your filters, mail messages matching the criteria you set should be automatically filtered. Try sending yourself a test message that will fit the criteria to be filtered. Check the destination folder, your messages will be there.

How do I use more advanced email filters?

The ITS email servers use the Sieve language to filtering incoming email. If you are familiar with programming languages and would like to do advanced filtering, you may check the “convert to advanced filter” box. This will give you a free-form box to enter your sieve filters. If you have errors in your filter, you will receive an error message via email to your account and all messages will automatically be filed into your Inbox. 

 Warning: If you wish to convert back to the basic view you will lose all of your filter rules.

Does ITS provide support troubleshooting email filters?

ITS will only provide support using the “Basic View” on the filters webpage. We will not be able to assist with advanced sieve filters.

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Article ID: 106
Created
Thu 12/7/17 4:41 PM
Modified
Mon 10/23/23 5:13 PM

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