Is there any way I can more easily run Outlook rules?

Question

I get a ton of automated mail at work and have about 40 filters ("rules") in Outlook ("Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010, version 14"). Among these, about half of them are on by default, and the other half are off because I need to see the emails as they come in. However, to clean my inbox out, I run the "off" rules periodically. This is very cumbersome, because I need to check each box in the "Run Rules Now" window individually, and since the size of that window is fixed (and tiny!) I can only see 5 rules at a time. So I select those 5, then scroll down. Select the next 5, scroll down. And so on.

I'd kill for a single button that could run a configurable set of rules with one click. Is there any way to get something like that? If not, are there any other ways that I can more easily run a large number of rules? I have tried to combine them into fewer rules but most of these are dependent on both the subject and the sender, and I don't think you can combine them - i.e you can't say "(subject = X AND sender = Y) OR (subject = A AND sender = B)".

Answer 1

You can create a macro to run your rules, then add a button to call the macro. Have a look at this guide:

• How to run Outlook 2007/2010 Rules from a button