email rules not working

[skibikegolf]

In my inbox, I have an email that says it is from Alan Borger in the from
column. When I open the email, I can see that the email was sent by a
service. The complete from address is:
(e-mail address removed); on behalf of; Alan Borger [[email protected]]

I want a rule to send this email to my Alan Borger folder.

I set up the rule as follows:

Apply this rule after the message arrives
from (e-mail address removed)
and with Alan Borger in the sender's address
and on this machine only
move it to the Alan Borger folder

Unfortunately the rule does not work. Any and all suggestions are
appreciated.

 

[Ben M. Schorr, MVP]

Probably a bit over-complicated. If it's always going to come from
(e-mail address removed), and if you only get Alan Borger mail from that
address then you don't need both rule options. Just use the from 39311...
criteria.

Do you need the "On this machine only" option? Are there other machines
that share this mailbox where you DON'T want this rule to fire? If not, get
rid of that criteria. Simplicity is better.

Also, you probably want to add the "And Stop Processing More Rules" action.

--
-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
http://www.officeforlawyers.com/outlook.htm
Author: The Lawyer's Guide to Microsoft Outlook 2007:
http://tinyurl.com/ol4law-amazon

 

[VanguardLH]

In my inbox, I have an email that says it is from Alan Borger in the from
column. When I open the email, I can see that the email was sent by a
service. The complete from address is:
(e-mail address removed); on behalf of; Alan Borger [[email protected]]

I want a rule to send this email to my Alan Borger folder.

I set up the rule as follows:

Apply this rule after the message arrives
from (e-mail address removed)
and with Alan Borger in the sender's address
and on this machine only
move it to the Alan Borger folder

Unfortunately the rule does not work. Any and all suggestions are
appreciated.

The "on behalf of" clause is merely Outlook showing you that the From
and Sender headers do not match. When you normally send e-mails, the
From header identifies you. When you send on "behalf of" someone else,
they get put in the From header but a Sender header gets added to show
that you actually sent the e-mail. Per RFC 2076, "Sender: The person or
agent submitting the message to the network, if other than shown by the
From header". While Outlook shows "on behalf of" because it saw the
Sender header (which didn't match on the From header), not all e-mail
clients will show "on behalf of" or bother with the Sender header. They
may only show what is in the From header.

"abc sent on behalf of xyz" means From = xyz and Sender = abc. You see
the e-mail came from xyz (and might get notifed that abc actually sent
it). The rule "with <string> in the sender's address" is based on what
is in the From header, not what is in the Sender header. So "abc on
behalf of xyz" means From = xyz and that's what you have to test on.
That means you have to test on who the e-mail was sent on behalf of and
not who actually sent the e-mail.

"39311 on behalf of Alan" means:
From: Alan
Sender: 39311

A rule testing on "from 39311" and "with Alan in sender's address" means
you are looking for both 39311 and Alan to be in the From header and
that isn't true. Just test for Alan in the From header. Or just test
for 39311 in the Sender header (via "with 'Sender: 39311' in the message
header" clause). You could test for both so only e-mails where Sender
is 39311 and From is Alan are handled by your rule but those values are
in *different* headers.