Two address books and Rules Wizard (Outlook 2002 SP1)

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I’m being innundated with spam (who doesn’t?) and I’ve tried to use Junk Email organizer which doesn’t work because no spammer uses same Email address, I’ve created a rule that has “keywords” such as CASH!! XXX, etc. but it is now not working as well as it used to because spammers are now increasingly using legit business vocabulary! 50% of my incoming messages are now being redirected to my spam folder (Not very good). I finally hit on a brilliant solution —

Since I routinely receive messages only from inside the company using Exchange Server, I decided to set up a Rule Wizard that would check EVERY incoming message and if the message is from someone that is NOT in the company address book (Global Address Book that is created by Exchange Server), then it gets dumped in Spam folder. If it is from someone who IS in the Global Address Book, then it stays in Inbox or gets routed to folders according to my rules. The problem is that Rules Wizard doesn’t seem to allow me to specify two different address books. I have my personal contact list that I maintain and it has customers from “outside” of my company that I’d like to be screened and put in Inbox as well. So, I created two rules: One rule would check whether that person is actually from the Global Address Book and another rule that check if that person is in the Contacts folder. Problem is that whenever I receive a message, I get an error message that the message cannot be copied to the folder and one of those rules turns off. As far as I can tell, I must have created a “conflict” somehow and when I turn off the rule that deals with my Contact folder, it works beautifully but all people that are not in Global Address Book are being dumped into the Spam folder.

Is it remotely possible to tell Outlook to check two different address books in one rule?

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Maybe I’m not quite following your requirement but I think what you want to try is negative logic:
Rule 1: If from PAB #1 stop processing more rules.
Rule 2: If from PAB #2 stop processing more rules.
Rule 3: Move to junk folder.

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Man! Outlook is ANNOYING! Before I posted my problem, setting up a rule that checks whether person is in my contact list (local) that is not in Global Address Book which is on the server worked fine but it kept on conflicting with another rule that checked whether that person was on Global Address Book which is on the server. After trying your suggestion, I noticed that now ALL messages that has people in my Outlook Contact list (which is local) is being completely ignored by the rule wizard! I tried deleting all rules except the one that verified that the sender is in my Contact List and it still got dumped to Spam folder. Any clues to why they are getting ignored but not the address book on server?

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GAL senders should be lacking an internet header and have exchange addresses – so create a rule around that for the GAL. I forget how to properly construct it though and i’m not sure if it’s at http://www.slipstick.com[/url%5D. But it gives you an idea to work on… maybe senders address does not contain @?

Next look for senders in contacts – but i think this is a client side rule and can cause all other rules to stop working if outlook is closed. You also have to choose whether to use the server rules or client side rules and need ot choose client side.

At the end of each rule use stop processing and i think you want the internet address rule first, so there is less mail to check for the second rule.

There is a page at slipstick that has a 4 step method for spam rules, have you read it?

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No, I haven’t read Slipstick (Never knew about it)

Good news is that I finally figured out why my rules were not acting the way it was supposed to. I’m running Outlook 2002 on Exchange Server 5.5 (My company is too poor to upgrade!) and every time I create a rule, it asks me that it can only be a client side. I assumed that the rules weren’t being saved to server. HOWEVER, in a fit of anger, I deleted all rules and restarted computer and ran the Rules Wizard and got the message that said that my client and server rules were different! Even though I never had any Server side rules set up. So, I told it I wanted Client only and it resolved the problem with rule refusing to run with the Contact List because it apparently was still accessing an old rule I had created and got saved to server even though it was considered Client only! Sheesh.

Thanks to all for help. I think I have it licked.

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