A rule contains one or more conditions as well as one or more actions. A good example of a rule is this:

Condition:
• if an incoming e-mail contains "scott" in the 'from' field
  AND
• if the subject line contains the word "viagra"

  Action:

• change the color to red
  AND
• and put it in the trash

The above example is a great way to filter out incoming junk. You know that if an incoming message contains the word "viagra", it's probably junk, so you have your e-mail program trash it for you.

However, just realize that the above example only puts the e-mail message in the trash, it does not delete it completely. So, if you're using Outlook, you can scroll through all the messages in your "Deleted Items" folder at any time. If a message is red, then you know that the above rule put it in there automatically (because if you put it in there manually, it would not be red), and you might want to just double check that.

After you've sifted through everything in your "Deleted Items" folder, and you know that it's all truly trash, you can then empty the folder.

Another great way to use rules is to keep all e-mail from a particular person in one folder. This makes it easy to go back and look at your communications with that person at any time.

And one other popular use for rules is the infamous "I'm on vacation" message. You can create a rule that says if you receive e-mail from a particular person, reply back automatically, telling them that you're on vacation and will be back in the office next Monday. This is frequently referred to as an "autoresponder", because your e-mail program is automatically responding for you. In order for this to work, you'll need an "always on" connection, and you'll need to leave your e-mail program running all the time.

One more tip. If you're familiar with how to setup an autoresponder, you might want to make some certain information available to the public via autoresponder. For example, let's say you sell houses. You can create a canned message that contains a list of all of the homes you have for sale (just update that message as often as you wish). Then, if someone wants to get your list of homes, then can send you an e-mail, with a subject line like "home list", and they will get the list back by e-mail. Since you receive that person's incoming e-mail, you will know exactly who got the info. Let your mind go, and you can imagine the possibilities (sports schedules, family happenings, price lists, etc).

There are already some good web pages out there that explain how to use rules, so I won't re-create the wheel. I'll just give you some links:

Outlook Express:
• Autoresponders
• Creating A Mail Rule
• Quarantine Selected E-mails

  Outlook:

• Rule Your E-mail
• Out-of-Office Experience

  Eudora:

• How To Use Filters
• Using Eudora's Filters to Avoid Spam
• How To Set Up Filters
• Working with Filters in Eudora Pro