Rules not working consistently

[Barry Watzman]

Ok, Outlook 2003.

I am getting a ton of junk mail for various ED medications (Viagra, etc.).

So I created a "rule" to delete any incoming message with "Viagra" in
the subject.

But the rule works inconsistently. Most such messages do get deleted,
but not all of them. And I can't figure out why it's inconsistent.

There is nothing wrong with rule; if I go into the Junk Mail Folder, and
I "run rule now", it gets rid of those messages in the Junk Mail Folder
with Viagra in the subject. But why didn't it do that in the first
place? Why does it only get rid of about 80% of such target messages,
while maybe 20% do not get deleted (it's not because of some weird
characters in the subject because, remember, if I manually "run rule
now", it does delete the messages that were not automatically deleted).

????

 

[Andrew Hamilton]

I subscribe to a number of Yahoo groups where the subject header
always contains the group name in brackets like this: [groupname].

So I have my rules written to detect the presence of [groupname] in
the incoming message subject. Works well, MOST of the time. In the
last few months (?) the rules seem to be working inconsistently.
Messages that should get filed into other folders according to my
rules stay in the Inbox. (OL 2003). If I run the rules on the
messages in the Inbox, the messages don't get moved.

What do I need to do?

-AH