One of the most sought features of an e-mail program is the ability to automatically route, print and otherwise process incoming messages -- and outgoing messages as well. In Microsoft Outlook, this function is provided by the Rules Wizard. Outlook provides application-level events, allowing you to write VBA routines to respond to new messages in a folder and to perform operations on outgoing items. Beginning with Exchange Server 5.5, the Exchange Server Event Service can run scripts on a schedule or when messages arrive, change or are deleted.
Outlook also supports "run a script" rules, allowing you to do some message processing as the messages arrive in the Inbox.
Rules Wizard
Rules Wizard processes both incoming and outgoing messages. See Rules Wizard and Assistants.
Tools in the Spotlight
File emails via eFiler Outlook toolbar into LAN and Cloud file systems (Google Drive, DropBox, OneDrive and WebDAV for Sharepoint, ODB, Box, DriveHQ etc.) in msg format with definable filenames to keep within Mailbox size limits and archive emails securely. File into predicted folders, drag and drop or by eRules to automate repetitive filing. Mobile filing for iPhone, Android, OWA by IMAP. Fast indexing search to find and use saved emails as if still in Outlook. Autosave for offsite backup. For all Outlook 2003, 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016. Free 14 day trial. | |
File emails from Outlook into project or client folders automatically. Match email addresses, project numbers, client names or references to a folder name located anywhere on your network. Watch as the bulk of your emails are automatically filed (ZERO clicks!) and finish the task with manual filing for emails that do not fall within the scope of a project or client folder. Organize filed emails into relevant sub-folders within your mailbox and auto purge dated email over time. Supports Outlook 2007, 2010, 2013 & 2016 | |
ITIL helpdesk with automated ticketing and issue tracking for support team to log, analyze, collaborate, track and escalate support requests in an organized and structured way in Outlook. Can auto-process incoming support requests, auto-assign technicians, enforce service level, set due date and send automated notifications to cut the overhead of manual tasks significantly. Comes with integrated Knowledge Base, Asset Tracking, SLA, Report builders and OLAP Statistical tools. Support for Skype, SMS and Phone calls. Includes Web Access sites for technicians and end-users. Improves your efficiency to enable faster response time. |
Tools
Email Responder plug-in for Microsoft Outlook is an out-of-office assistant. Auto reply with away message templates; change your status and reply templates remotely. Change or schedule your free-busy status manually (Away, Out of Office, Vacation, Tentative, Custom) or use you Microsoft Outlook Calendar or Skype availability status. Auto response to selected Contacts or Distribution lists only. Enable Microsoft Outlook auto forward. Windows 10 and Outlook 2016 support. | |
Attachment management addin for Outlook enables you to detach attachments and embedded images as files in a local or network drive and link them up within the emails, for easy reference and retrieval. Remove links and re-attach files back when required, or when replying or forwarding the emails. You can also set Attachment Manager to monitor any number of mail-enabled folders and mailboxes to automatically detach incoming emails, with no manual intervention. You can set the addin to skip detachment of certain attachments. | |
Auto-Mate is an Outlook utility that allows you use define rules to move mail from your Inbox (or other folders) based on several criteria, including the age of the message. While Outlook rules only run as messages are downloaded or when you click Run Rules now, Auto-Mate rules run on a schedule, enabling you to apply rules to messages that have been in your Inbox for a given number of hours, days or weeks. Available in Standard or Pro Version. Outlook O365, Outlook 2019 as well as Outlook 2010, 2013, 2016, 32 and 64 bit editions. Version 12. | |
AutoReply Flow checks the original message for a Reply-To: address field. If one is found then an auto-reply message will be sent to this address. If an original message has no Reply-To: address field then an auto-reply message will be sent to the From: address of the original message. The subject line of the auto-reply message consists of the prefix ("Confirmation:", "Autoreply:" etc) and the Subject line of original message; the body of auto-reply message will include the original message text. | |
CI-Mail-Policy is a rule-based email action framework which allows you to control email flow and apply policies to messages which pass the Exchange Server. Centrally manage actions such as adding email signatures / disclaimers to emails sent from any devices (including smartphones), sending auto-responders, redirecting messages, rewriting sender's addresses, rejecting or silently deleting messages and many more. Actions can be filtered on Active Directory Groups, OUs and other AD attributes. Free & fully featured trial. | |
CleanOut is a virtual AI assistant that guides you through your messages, one conversation at-a-time in order of priority, providing you with tools to quickly deal with them making sure nothing 'slips between the cracks'. Through this process, CleanOut is an order-of-magnitude more productive, considerably less stressful and ensures you deal with the most important business first. New user-requested features include an Email Scoreboard, Session Summary and highlighting of email in your Inbox from your Important Contacts. Available as a Win10 app or Outlook add-in in English, German and Spanish. | |
Available in two versions, a free personal edition and a more powerful professional version, ClearContext IMS is an add-in for Outlook that automatically prioritizes, organizes, and color-codes the e-mail in your inbox, placing the most important e-mails from the most important senders at the top of the inbox, ready to be dealt with immediately. Less important e-mails, such as newsletters and correspondence from low priority senders, are placed further down in the inbox and junk/spam e-mails are moved to the bottom. ClearContext IMS automates the e-mail filing process to help you keep your entire mailbox organized. Version 3.0 | |
Sperry Software's Compliance Copies add-in for Microsoft Outlook will automatically add multiple BCC or CC recipients based on multiple different rules for different people. Unlike the Always BCC add-in, this new add-in also supports exceptions to the CC/BCCs conditions. This tool works with Outlook 2007/2010/2013. | |
Data Publisher add-in provides a means to bring your Outlook contents such as mails, appointments, tasks or contacts to SharePoint lists, where these can be shared with other users. This process can be performed manually, or automatically and is achieved without using any scripts or programming, with complete seamless experience to the users. In other words, Data Publisher extends your Microsoft Outlook to effectively act as a content provider for your enterprise SharePoint repository. It can be adapted to feed data to SharePoint lists for various purposes, such as for issue tracking, timesheets, projects or contact managements. | |
E-mail Follow-up reminds you to send a follow-up e-mail message if the reply has not been received in specified time. E-mail Follow-Up will watch for the messages and show you alert when the reply has not been received. Moreover, E-mail Follow-Up allows you to send follow up message using a predefined template to remind the recipient that the reply hasn't been received. Version 1. | |
eeminders gives you an uncluttered inbox that shows you what you need to work on, in the order that you want to work on them. Defer/snooze emails out of your inbox and have them magically appear back when you actually need them. Get email reminders to follow-up on important emails right in your inbox. Get reminders for non-email actions in your Inbox. Prioritize or schedule your emails in the order that you need to work on them and more... Supports Outlook 2007, 2010, 2013 and 2016 (32bit and 64bit). Free 30 day trial available | |
Email Parser is used to retrieve emails from Outlook PST files, Exchange servers or Office 365 accounts and extract the data contained in them. It supports exporting to an Excel file or Google Sheets. C# Scripting and PowerShell is also possible to integrate Email Parser with your existing tools. It has a wide range of examples available at the website and is free to try. | |
Exchange/Outlook add-on to create custom replies, forwards, signatures -- inserting any type of boilerplate text into your message. Templates are stored in Outlook or Exchange folders and can contain scripting elements (in VBScript or ET's own script language) to build replies that use information from the incoming message. Various extensions can handle such tasks as mailing list subscriptions. For a rotating quote, download the Rotating Text template. Has some issues with Outlook 2002 -- make sure you get the latest update, disable RTF templates, and don't try to use ET as a custom action in Rules Wizard. | |
EmptyJunk is a Power Automate flow that moves any email delivered to the Junk Email folder to the Inbox folder. Why? To bypass the junk email filtering. Many people prefer not to use the built-in spam filtering. As you know, Microsoft 365 (Office 365) has no setting to disable or enable the Junk email filter completely. This flow solves the problem tenant-wide. It periodically moves messages form the Junk Email folder to the Inbox folder in each user mailbox. | |
Anti-spam, disclaimers (with variables), archiving Internet mail, Internet mail usage reports. Includes a POP downloader and personalized server-based autoreplies that can include attachments and tracking numbers. Can archive to an ODBC database. Current version includes Overall improved anti-spam technology, an additional anti-spam engine called SpamRazer along with improved performance and a real-time dashboard. GFI MailEssentials now supports GFI Directory, enabling administrators to manage users just like they would with Active Directory when installed in a DMZ. | |
An incident ticket management groupware add-in that leverages Microsoft Outlook, Exchange and SharePoint. Provide an easy way for support staffs to collect ticket data from emails, assign technicians and problem areas, set due date and other custom metadata. And then use this information to generate trouble tickets in one of the administrator defined SharePoint lists, where customer issues can be tracked and collaborated with other technicians and stakeholders to seek early resolution. | |
Save, navigate, search and manage emails / documents in SharePoint all directly from Outlook. Integral to Macroview is the ability to drag and drag from anywhere to everywhere using the intuitive folder tree structure. The folder tree contains comprehensive right click menus which can be further extended by using configurable plug-ins and custom add-ins. Free 30 day evaluations. | |
OLAP Statistics tool for Outlook helps you gain insight into your folder items and make new discoveries. It analyzes Outlook data in multi-dimensional view in grids, charts and graphs and supports pivoting, drill down/slice and dice and filtering. You can run analysis tool on individual Outlook or public folders. Specify any field as the measure using functions such as sum, count, distinct count, maximum, minimum etc, and use this against other fields to generate statistics. Save and share reports as PDF, JPEG, HTML or PNG formats. | |
Mail organiser for Outlook to replace the built-in Rules Wizard. Offers unlimited rule capacity (only limited by your computer hardware), quick folder find, attachment renaming, and Bayesian antispam mail filtering. | |
Easy-to-use email parser to automatically extract data from your emails. Send the data to Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel, or other applications. | |
File 90% of your emails at the click of a button. Manage your Inbox and Sent Items folders. Move emails out of the Inbox to the correct folder at the click of a button. QuickFile remembers the folders used for each person and presents a short customized list each time. Use the same list to Send&File in one step instead of having to go back to your Sent Items folder. Plus many more email management features such as one-click creation of task/appointments from emails, newsletter processing, deferred non-urgent emails and much more. | |
Timed Email Organizer is a brand new add-in which can replace or augment your Outlook rules. Unlike Outlook, this add-in will act on emails based on how old they are, supports ANDs, ORs, NOTs and wildcards in the conditions, and has a test mode so that you can see what the effect of a given rule would be if it were run. It will even import your current Outlook rules and automatically disable them for you. |
More Information
- Contact Management Tools -- Many of these utilities include autoresponders as one method of managing communications with contacts.
- Content Control Tools -- Includes tools to filter incoming and outgoing messages for content and attachments
- Message Extraction Tools -- To pull information automatically from incoming messages for use in databases, replies, etc.
- Pager Tools -- To automatically forward messages to a pager
- Fax Tools -- To automatically print or forward incoming faxes
- Notification Tools -- For enhanced alerts when new messages arrive
Hello Diane,
I am looking for an automated way to click a link in the body of an email if specific words are in the body of said email and is from a specific sender address.
Does such a solution/3rd party product exist?
I have a macro that can do it - you'd using the run a script rule option
Open Hyperlinks in an Outlook Email Message (slipstick.com)
Hi Diane,
I am looking for a automated solution to send a reminder in x number of days on the emails addressed directly to us and is not replied to.
I have a macro - not sure if there is an addin - this macro forwards the message but that can easily be changed.
Forward Messages that were not Replied To (slipstick.com)
Hello,
I am looking for a third party software or script for outlook that can take part of an incoming email ( ...say a transaction alert from a bank) and send said part to another email address. Any help would be appreciated.
Many Thanks
as long as there is a pattern, you can use regex to grab it and insert it into a new message. https://www.slipstick.com/developer/regex-parse-message-text/ shows how to get it out, you just need to insert it into a new message and send - https://www.slipstick.com/outlook/rules/send-a-new-message-when-a-message-arrives/
Hi There,
I am looking for a third party piece of software that will manage auto replies even if the user isn't logged into that mailbox. There are plenty of options for replying when the user is logged in to the profile for the mailbox however other than using a vbscript I am unable find a solution. Anyone come across this issue before? any help would be greatly appreciated
Cheers guys
It would have to run server-side - otherwise something has to log in on a client to check mail. If you use Exchange, the out of office feature can use rules for autoreply and can use simple templates stored server side.
Hi Diane,
I hope you can help me with my problem. So I'm in need of setting up an auto response. I know how to set the rules to respond back to the sender however, what I need is to send an auto response not to the sender of the email but the email hyperlink that comes with in the body of the message it's self. I'm in the hospitality industry so I get many emails from a company that sends me the email of the person wanting a room. I just don't understand how to set a rule to grab the hyperlink with in the message and respond only to that and not back to the sender. I hope I'm making sense, but any help would be appreciative
Yes, I want to have the code to identify the pattern of the email subject first and then auto reply to the sender if the pattern of the email subject is not correct. For example, the subject email should either be 123-456789/CO01/ABCD or 987-654321/CO02/DEFG and thus the pattern should be:
""[0-9]{3}-[0-9]{6}/CO[0-9]{2}/[A-Z]{4}" <- Am i right?
So if the email subject is not following this pattern, then the code should send an auto reply to sender.
Ok... use the if statement to control whether to reply -
If code = "" Then Exit Sub <== replies if code in subject If not code = "" Then Exit Sub <== replies if the code is not in subject or use If code = "" Then ' set reply etc ' send reply end if
Hi Diane,
Thank you so much! I got the code working for email that I selected in the Outlook window! However, what should I do such that it will run on every email in one of my inbox folder and perform the code without having me to select it 1 by 1?
If you want to run it on selected messages, you need to loop through the selection.
Sub ReplywithNote()
Dim olInspector As Outlook.Inspector
Dim olDocument As Word.Document
Dim olSelection As Word.Selection
Dim Session As Outlook.NameSpace
Dim currentExplorer As Explorer
Dim Selection As Selection
Dim item As MailItem
Set currentExplorer = Application.ActiveExplorer
Set Selection = currentExplorer.Selection
For Each item In Selection
ExtractText (item.Subject)
'rest of code
Next
end sub
See https://www.slipstick.com/developer/code-samples/working-items-folder-selected-items/ for a code smaple to run it on all items in a folder.
If you want it completely automatic, the sample I posted earlier works as a run a script rule, or you can use an itemadd macro to watch the folder and run when new messages arrive.
Hi Diane,
The arrangement of numbers and letters will always be the same.Examples: 123-456789/CO1/ABCD or 456-654321/CO2/DEFG. I think the pattern to lookup for should be:
"[0-9]{3}-/[0-9]{5}/CO[0-9]{1}/[A-Z]{4}"
Am i right?
This matches your samples: "([0-9]{3}-[0-9]{6}/CO[0-9]/[A-Z]{4})"
using the macro at https://www.slipstick.com/outlook/rules/run-script-rule-reply-message/ as the base, this run a script macro and function look for the code and reply if the code is found.
Dim code As String
Sub ReplywithNote(Item As Outlook.MailItem)
Dim message, Str As String
Dim olInspector As Outlook.Inspector
Dim olDocument As Word.Document
Dim olSelection As Word.Selection
ExtractText (Item.Subject)
If code = "" Then Exit Sub
Set myReply = Item.Reply
myReply.Display
Set olInspector = Application.ActiveInspector()
Set olDocument = olInspector.WordEditor
Set olSelection = olDocument.Application.Selection
olSelection.InsertBefore code
' uncomment to send
' myReply.Send
End Sub
Function ExtractText(Str As String) ' As String
Dim regEx As New RegExp
Dim NumMatches As MatchCollection
Dim M As Match
regEx.Pattern = "([0-9]{3}-[0-9]{6}/CO[0-9]/[A-Z]{4})"
Set NumMatches = regEx.Execute(Str)
If NumMatches.Count = 0 Then
ExtractText = ""
Else
Set M = NumMatches(0)
ExtractText = M.SubMatches(0)
End If
code = ExtractText
End Function
Hi Diane,
I am trying to write a code to auto reply emails where its subject does not follow a certain type of pattern. For example, if email I received does not have its subject written in a pattern of XXXXX/ABCD/XX (where X represent numbers), I would like the code to auto reply the mail to sender to ask him to resend the email to the desired subject pattern. Could you please advise? Thank you.
You'll need a run a script rule. Will /ABCD/ always be the same text? If so it'll be fairly easy to look for it using instr or mid function. If you need to look for the pattern you'll need to use regex or something to id the pattern.
I have a bunch of samples at https://www.slipstick.com/outlook/rules/outlooks-rules-and-alerts-run-a-script/
Hi Diane,
Thank you for your kind reply. ABCD may not always be the same. I need a code to auto reply an email if its subject does not follow a certain patterns. Do you have a similar sample to this?
Will I be able to use regex to capture the email's subject pattern and then run a code to auto reply to the sender if the pattern does not follow a certain condition?
Thank you.
i have a reg function that might work - but the pattern it looks for needs to be unique - will it always be number/letters/number and will the number of numbers or letters vary?