Outlook Email Notifications for Important Emails Only!

Most Outlooks users turn off Outlook’s email notification message. With the volume of emails we all receive these days, it is way too detrimental to productivity to have a message interrupt you every time you receive an email. But… what if you want to be alerted whenever you receive emails from particular people… maybe your boss… or an important client.

Did you know that you can use Rules to display an alert similar to the one shown below... so that it will only come up when you receive an email from one or more specific email addresses?



Here are step by step instructions…

Go to your Inbox.

Click Tools-Rules and Alerts to display the Rules dialog box.



Click the New Rule button to display the Rules Wizard screen.



Click “Display mail from someone in the New Item Alert Window”. (A on the picture above)

Click on “people or distribution” list (B on the picture above) to display the Rule Address screen.

Select someone from the list or type in the person’s email address in the From field.

Click OK to go back to the Rules Wizard screen.

Click “a specific message” (C on the picture above)

Type in what you want the alert message to say and click OK e.g. Email from Boss!

Click Finish

The next time you receive an email from that person, Outlook will display a message over everything else that you are working on.

This simple trick has helped our own team a lot. I hope it works well for you too.

If you find this tip useful or have your own tips for better email notifications, please leave a comment on the blog.