V
Vanguard
Outlook 2002 SP2
Windows 2002 Pro SP4
The following is an example using the latest case of a rule not working
but may also apply anytime a rule checks on both the sender's e-mail
address along with some text in the body of the message.
I send 3 e-mails to (e-mail address removed). Their auto-responder sends back
3 worthless e-mails. I want to automatically delete them since they are
useless fluff. So I defined the following rule:
Apply this rule after the message arrives
with (e-mail address removed) in the sender's address
delete it
and stop processing more rules
This rule works every time to get rid of Hotmail's auto-responder
messages. However, I really only want to delete e-mails from that
e-mail address when it comes from their auto-responder, not if perchance
a Microsoft representative used it to respond (yeah, when pigs fly, I
know), so I modified the rule to:
Apply this after the message arrives
with (e-mail address removed) in the sender's address
and with "auto-generated response" in the body
delete it
and stop processing more rules
This rule works maybe 1 in 3 times of getting Hotmail's auto-responder
message. For each of the Hotmail auto-responder e-mails, they are in
plain text and contain a first line that reads, "This is an
auto-generated response designed to ...". The string "auto-generated
response" is in all 3 e-mails from Hotmail. I have also tried using
"auto generated response" in case Outlook's rules don't understand
hyphenated words and might remove the hyphen. I have also tried
"generated response" and just "response". The results are the same:
only 1 of the 3 auto-responder e-mails from Hotmail get deleted.
What gives? Why can the rule find the string in the body of one e-mail
but not find that same string - which does exist - in other e-mails?
Even when I reduce the condition to just search for "response" (which is
really too short to be unique) the rule often misses it in the e-mail
and so that message doesn't get deleted. This is not the case where a
prior rule which has "stop processing more rules" circumvented the
execution of a later rule. I am using Run Now to run just the Hotmail
auto-responder delete rule. And the damn thing works on one of the
e-mails, so why not the other two that also have the same string?
I could revert to just testing on the sender's e-mail address but this
isn't what I was trying to define. I want the sender's e-mail address
AND a string in the body to qualify the rule to execute its action.
Although I'm showing a problem here with the auto-responder messages
received from Hotmail, I've seen this happen in other rules that I have
defined where both the sender's email address and some string in the
body are used in conjunction to determine if an e-mail qualifies for
whatever action is specified in the rule. Is Outlook so flaky in
scanning the body of messages that it only manages to see the string
criteria one in three times? Even re-executing the rule several times
never results in the rule catching an e-mail that qualifies which leads
me to believe that somehow Microsoft has screwed up the MAPI proprietary
version of the e-mail that gets saved in the PST file so that a match
would never be possible.
Windows 2002 Pro SP4
The following is an example using the latest case of a rule not working
but may also apply anytime a rule checks on both the sender's e-mail
address along with some text in the body of the message.
I send 3 e-mails to (e-mail address removed). Their auto-responder sends back
3 worthless e-mails. I want to automatically delete them since they are
useless fluff. So I defined the following rule:
Apply this rule after the message arrives
with (e-mail address removed) in the sender's address
delete it
and stop processing more rules
This rule works every time to get rid of Hotmail's auto-responder
messages. However, I really only want to delete e-mails from that
e-mail address when it comes from their auto-responder, not if perchance
a Microsoft representative used it to respond (yeah, when pigs fly, I
know), so I modified the rule to:
Apply this after the message arrives
with (e-mail address removed) in the sender's address
and with "auto-generated response" in the body
delete it
and stop processing more rules
This rule works maybe 1 in 3 times of getting Hotmail's auto-responder
message. For each of the Hotmail auto-responder e-mails, they are in
plain text and contain a first line that reads, "This is an
auto-generated response designed to ...". The string "auto-generated
response" is in all 3 e-mails from Hotmail. I have also tried using
"auto generated response" in case Outlook's rules don't understand
hyphenated words and might remove the hyphen. I have also tried
"generated response" and just "response". The results are the same:
only 1 of the 3 auto-responder e-mails from Hotmail get deleted.
What gives? Why can the rule find the string in the body of one e-mail
but not find that same string - which does exist - in other e-mails?
Even when I reduce the condition to just search for "response" (which is
really too short to be unique) the rule often misses it in the e-mail
and so that message doesn't get deleted. This is not the case where a
prior rule which has "stop processing more rules" circumvented the
execution of a later rule. I am using Run Now to run just the Hotmail
auto-responder delete rule. And the damn thing works on one of the
e-mails, so why not the other two that also have the same string?
I could revert to just testing on the sender's e-mail address but this
isn't what I was trying to define. I want the sender's e-mail address
AND a string in the body to qualify the rule to execute its action.
Although I'm showing a problem here with the auto-responder messages
received from Hotmail, I've seen this happen in other rules that I have
defined where both the sender's email address and some string in the
body are used in conjunction to determine if an e-mail qualifies for
whatever action is specified in the rule. Is Outlook so flaky in
scanning the body of messages that it only manages to see the string
criteria one in three times? Even re-executing the rule several times
never results in the rule catching an e-mail that qualifies which leads
me to believe that somehow Microsoft has screwed up the MAPI proprietary
version of the e-mail that gets saved in the PST file so that a match
would never be possible.