My experience is that "stop processing more rules" doesn't work as you would think. It looks to me like "stop processing more rules" is followed even when the test condition doesn't match.

You put in a rule: "check messages when it arrives where subject contains "viagra", delete it and stop processing more rules.

It goes check all messages, if the subject contains "viagra", delete it, then (even if not containing "viagra") stop processing more rules - not as you might expect, "stop processing more rules" IF the subject contans "viagra."

I had to remove the "stop processing" instruction in my early spam handler rules to get the behaviour I wanted.

Man, this had been bugging me for a long time. Great tip.

I'm running Outlook 2002, and the "stop" only works if the condition is met - i.e. the intuitive case.

<ul id="quote"><h6>netringer wrote:</h6>My experience is that "stop processing more rules" doesn't work as you would think. It looks to me like "stop processing more rules" is followed even when the test condition doesn't match.</ul>

I've had the exact same problems you've described; I believe that "stop processing more rules" is always executed despite what the rules wizard may tell you.

Is there another solution to the initial problem?

Thanks! that was just what I was looking for! A+!

Thanks a lot, I have been searching the Web for several hours to find this perfect solution!

Good job!

I found that this helped my duplicates hugely. To get around the issues listed in prior posts, I put my rules in order of importance, so that I would catch most of my duplicates. Prioritizing definitely seems to have helped. JM2cents

Like I say - works like a charm - exactly what I was googling for and the first/top hit too :) I've had experience with rules like that before (Eudora, among others) but it just wasn't so obvious with outlook.. kind of hidden among many other options, when it's so important - it should really be a checkbox by itself at the end or something.

Thanks!

Cheers

Andrew Derry

This tip worked for a while, at first. But now, I am getting duplicate and triplicate messages again, and all my rules already have the "stop processing more rules" clause. Any ideas?

You probably have to re-order your rules.
Most probably you have got some rules "relocating" some types of messages into specific directories. these "belong to" rules must be "seated" at the end of the list!

thanks a million. eyes opening.

This is not a reliable work around. It only works in *some* situations, and actually makes the problem uglier because it then becomes difficult to see why rules are not being executed as expected.

I have a suspicion that some rules are process on the exchange server, and some rules are processed locally. Somewhere along the line, a hand-off is made, and I don't believe the message is ever handed back to the server to process server based rules. It's a real mess regardless of what's happening. "Stop processing more rules" worsens things, because sometimes messages take the wrong path, and other times they are duplicated anyway because of parallel server/local processing.

Outlook users only have an illusion that they have control over the processing of their mail. Advanced users should switch to linux, and use *procmail*, the holy grail of mail processing.

Thanks a lot for suggesting.