How to define local rules

[yankeeDDL]

Hello,

my email account was recently switched to Exchange served (was POP3 before).
Now the rules are limited to 32KB.
I have hundreds of rules (many hundreds) and now only a few (~40) work.
I don't need to execute rules on the server: I would be happy if I can have
1 rule that moves the emails from the server to a local folder and then
"local" rules that move those emails to the appropriate folders.

This would still require to rewrite all rules (YIKES!) but it could be a
solution. Yet, I don't know how this can be done: it seems that all rules I
create are applied to the Inbox.
I looked in MS KB and only find silly tricks to reduce the rule size so that
more rules would fit in 32KB.
There is absolutely no way that all the rules that I have will fit in 32KB
(or in 256KB - which I read is the new limit for some new version of
Exchange).

Any idea/suggestion?
Thanks in advance

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Just curious; why do you need so many rules in the first place?

In pretty much all my consulting I did I've been able to create an efficient
way of organizing mail with less than 10 rules and using a combination of
rules, categories, custom views and Search Folders.

 

[yankeeDDL]

It's a bit a matter of preference and a bit a matter of need.
I work on several projects at the same time (say, 10) and with different
groups (say, 10) and I have some "personal" contacts with which I communicate
through my work email (say , 10).
So that alone would be enough to almost reach the limit.
I find it very helpful, however, to have a 2nd level filtering which is
"almost" people based.
So in a project I would have sub folders with key-people involved and one
"generic" folder with everything else.
Say that this happens 4 times on each project/group and we're already at
20*4+10 = 90.
There's also a whole set of emails that I like to have filtered in a
"different way"; e.g.: emails related to my travel/bookings, memos,
documents, stocks, taxes, notifications/alerts ...
All in all, in 1 year I easily pass 200 rules.
It is true that I could probably go back and trim/optimize some of them to
bring the number down to < 200 but that would take time which I don't want to
spend on organizing rules.
It has worked well for me for years, until Exchange arrived. I like the
concept. I understand the limitation of 32KB, BUT, my opinion, it is
completely unacceptable that the number of rules is limited so dramatically.
I have over 35K emails in my inbox, scattered over >100 folders. A search
across all of them would take hours. Having 2~3 levels makes the search
extremely more efficient and, hardly necessary.
Another major complaint is that we should be reading massive warnings: "Hey
you, if you think of using Exchange and you have more than 30 rules, think
twice!"

Finally: I see no technical reason why a user should not be able to download
all (or most) emails locally and then do whatever he pleases with them. I
would consider this a basic feature of a decent email server/client. I
considered it obvious since "pine" on Unix, 15 years ago. It was
disappointing to see that it is not at all the case.

 

[Roady [MVP]]

I can understand your need but I would still suggest you would revise your
sorting by rules only approach. Within a project folder you can easily find
all emails from a certain contact by the option Group By Contact or create a
filtered view to show only messages from a specific contact. This will also
allow you to maintain an overview of all mail related to that project. This
would already drastically decrease the amount of rules required.

FYI: The increase of the rules limit to 256KB will allow you to create >400
"move to folder" rules.

If you want to bypass Exchange server side storage altogether than you can
also connect to the Exchange server by the POP3 protocol. Contact your mail
admin for more info on this.

 

[yankeeDDL]

Roady,

I did not know I could use POP3 with Exchange. Thanks.
Also, I will try (again) the sort-by views per folder. I did before and I
was not crazy about them.
But people change ...

Thanks for the help. Appreciated.

 

[Roady [MVP]]

You're welcome!