How create an e-mail notification in response to new e-mails?

[Tom Lonski]

Hi everyone,

I'm currently using Outlook 2002 SP3 on Windows XP.

I have multiple e-mail accounts. One of them I can only access through VPN.
I can't run VPN all the time because it slows everything else down on my
computer and causes other problems. I don't receive many e-mails on the VPN
account, but when I do I need to know about it quickly. Because of company
security policies, I cannot simply forward e-mail from the VPN account to the
account I routinely use.

One solution that occurred to me is to have Outlook send me an e-mail
notification whenever new e-mail arrives on the VPN account. The e-mail
notification would simply say something like "New e-mail has arrived on your
VPN account.".

First question is, does anyone have a better solution? (Cause I can't get
this to work although it seems straightforward.)

The second question is, can anyone tell me how to do this in Outlook 2002?
Will it work in Outlook 2003?

I tried using the Rules Wizard to do this. I set up a rule to check e-mails
when they arrive and have the server reply using a specific message. When I
use this rule, Outlook displays a new window with a blank e-mail where I can
enter my e-mail address and the notification message. Unfortunately this
doesn't work. Outlook/Exchange ignores the e-mail address I entered and
sends the notification e-mail to the sender of the e-mail I just received.
According to article KB292906 in the Knowledge Base, this is a known bug in
Outlook 2002. Is this fixed in Outlook 2003?

Thanks for the help!

 

[Ben M. Schorr - MVP]

How would Outlook know if mail arrived on the VPN account? Do you have a
second machine, inside the network, running Outlook?

Aloha,

-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, OneNote-MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
Microsoft Outlook FAQ: http://www.factplace.com/outlook.htm

**I apologize but I am unable to respond to direct requests for assistance.
Please post questions and replies here in the newsgroup. Mahalo!

 

[Tom Lonski]

Ahh, important point I didn't explain. I'm using Outlook with Exchange. The
rule I described in my original e-mail is a server-side rule that executes on
Exchange when new e-mail arrives.

Mahalo! (Hope I got that right. :-D)

 

[Ben M. Schorr - MVP]

Reply using a template will always send a reply to the sender of the
message. If your company won't let you do a forward or redirect of the
message then short of creating a custom script that generates a message I'm
not quite sure how you're going to get the notification.

Aloha,

-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, OneNote-MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
Microsoft Outlook FAQ: http://www.factplace.com/outlook.htm

**I apologize but I am unable to respond to direct requests for assistance.
Please post questions and replies here in the newsgroup. Mahalo!

 

[Tom Lonski]

When using Outlook with Exchange, the Rules Wizard displays both client-side
rules and server-side rules. The action "reply using a specific template" is
a client-side rule and works as you described below. The action I was trying
to use was "have server reply using a specific message". This is a
server-side rule. If you're not using Exchange, you won't see this action
listed in Outlook's Rules Wizard.

The documentation I looked through wasn't clear about exactly what this
action is supposed to do. There are suggestions that what's supposed to
happen is that the server is supposed to send the "specific message" when the
action is triggered. Both addressees and message body are defined in the
"specific message." However, Microsoft has this documented as a bug for
Outlook 2002 as I mentioned in my original post.

So, does anyone know if this works in Outlook 2003?

Or have an alternate solution?

Cheers.