Send Messages with Zip File Attachments to Junk Mail

One of the things I do each morning is check Twitter for questions about Outlook. This morning I found this one from Meester Neek.

Is there any way to set up #Outlook so it automatically puts emails with zip file attachments into junk mail?

— Señor Neek (@NKBTN) June 18, 2013

Someone else had already replied to the tweet suggesting that Meester Neek create a rule to handle this. Unfortunately, Outlook’s only rule condition for attachments is which has an attachment. There is no option for specifying an attachment name or type. We can still use a rule and that rule can use the which has an attachment condition, but the rule is going to have to run a script in order to determine if any of the attachments are zip files and act accordingly. The script itself is extremely simple. All it has to do is check the file name of each attachment to see if it ends with .zip. If it does, then the script will move the message to the Junk E-mail folder. Otherwise, the script does nothing. This solution should work for any version of Outlook on a PC. Note that it will not work for Outlook on a Mac, OWA, or mobile devices.

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Mobile Email Notifications

 

Today, most of us have smartphones that can send/receive email from anywhere. But what if you don’t have a smartphone? Or perhaps you do have a smartphone, but your company has a policy that prohibits accessing the corporate email system from it. Let’s say that you have a cell phone, not a smartphone, or you have a personally owned smartphone, and that you will be away from your desk for a while. While you’re out, you’d like to know if a particular message has arrived. That’s the situation one commenter found himself in and approached me about.

Outlook does have a built-in solution for this scenario, which is to use a rule that sends a message based on a condition. The rule watches for messages that meet a certain condition. When one arrives, it would create an email and send it to the email account on your smartphone, if that’s what you have, or as a text message to a regular cell phone. The problem with this solution is that you have to use a message template and templates don’t allow you to pass on any of the message’s details. Assume that you want a notification for any message coming from a person on your project team. A message from one of them comes in and the rule sends the notification. Because the notification is a template, you don’t have any clue who sent the message that triggered the rule, or what the subject is. All you know is that you got a message from someone on your project team. That’s not very useful.

Finding Rules Related to a Folder in Outlook

I met Manaswini Sawant (@manaswini) a few weeks ago on Twitter. We met when I responded to one of her tweets. The tweet in question asked Microsoft to add a new feature to Outlook. The feature Manaswini would like to see added is the ability to right-click a folder and select a menu option that would show her all the rules associated with the selected folder. It’s an interesting idea and, fortunately, one that is possible in Outlook 2007 and later with a little programming.