Auto-Reply for all messages without subject

Outlook 365 2016 2013 2010 2007
This rule will be useful if you receive a lot of messages (for example, reports) from your colleagues and use rules to copy or move correspondence to the specific folders (like Rule to copy all correspondence about some subject to the specific folder or Rule to move all correspondence about some subject to the specific folder). Unfortunately those rules wouldn't work for messages with empty subject, but you still can create a rule to send an Auto-Reply if the message don't have a subject.

To create a rule, follow next steps:

   1.   Create a template with text which you want to send like Auto-Reply. See Using templates to facilitate more versatile E-mail Distribution for more details.

   2.   Select Tools -> Rules and Alerts... to display the Rules and Alerts dialog box.

   3.   In the Rules and Alerts dialog box, choose New Rule...:

Rules and Alerts in Outlook 2003

   4.   Choose the Start from a blank rule option and then the Check messages when they arrive option, click Next.

Rules Wizard Step 1 in Outlook 2003

   5.   Choose conditions:

  • If you want to limit the list of people who send you messages, choose one or several conditions: When you finish adding the conditions, click the Next button.
  • If you want to use this rule for all incoming messages, click the Next button. Click Yes in the information dialog box:
    Question in Outlook 2003

   6.   Choose reply using a specific template in Step 1, then click a specific template in Step 2 and choose the template:

  • In the Select a Reply Template dialog box, on the Look In list box, choose User Templates in File System:
    Select a Reply Template in Outlook 2003
  • Click the Browse button and choose the path to your template in the Browse For Folder dialog box.
  • In the Select a Reply Template dialog box, choose the template and then click Open.

When you choose a template, click Next.

   7.   Choose exceptions: select except if the subject contains specific words and click specific words in the Step 2 text box. You have to insert numbers and letters (or at least all vowel letters, because any phrase or word in the subject consists not less than one vowel letter):

Rule Exceptions in Outlook 2003

   8.   Click Next again, name your rule, and click Finish.

Note: For some rules it is necessary to restart Outlook.

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