Re: Rules Problem (blank emails)

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From: Vanguard (see_signature)
Date: 01/03/05 

Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2005 09:48:28 -0600

"Tony Shrapnel" <shrapnel@ozemail.com.au> wrote in message
news:tUaCd.101986$K7.93140@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
> Thanks for your suggestion, but that does not work. You only have the
> option of excepting words, not characters. If you set the rule to
> allow emails with "a" in the subject, it will still block (for
> example) "that".
>
> TS
>
> "Vanguard" <see_signature> wrote in message
> news:%23KXKtHJ8EHA.3376@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
>> "Tony Shrapnel" <shrapnel@ozemail.com.au> wrote in message
>> news:16MBd.99518$K7.50922@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
>>>I use Outlook 2003 and every day I receive several totally blank
>>>emails. I want to create a rule to filter them to my Deleted Items
>>>folder, but I can't see how to do it. The Rules Wizard always wants
>>>some actual value to work with and you can't insert "nothing" as a
>>>criterion (i.e. ""). I would be grateful for any suggestions.
>>>
>>> Tony Shrapnel
>>>
>>
>>
>> Think in reverse. You want to keep e-mails that have a non-blank
>> Subject. In reverse, you want to delete all e-mails that have a blank
>> Subject, so defined THAT rule. Define a rule that deletes everything
>> except if it has "a" to "z" or "0" to "9" in the Subject header.
>>
>> Some folks shorten the rule by just looking for the vowels instead of
>> every alphanumeric character, but there are languages that have words
>> with no vowels in them, like Welch and Jewish, or strings that are
>> valid without any vowels in them, like "Mr. X, tsk tsk tsk."
>>
>> --
>> _________________________________________________________________
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>>
>
>

If you search on "too" then the rule will not match on just "t" or "o"
but it will match on "too" and "tools", "cartoon", and so on. It is a
substring match. Testing on "a", "b", and so on will match whenever any
of those SINGLE characters appear. Yeah, I know the dialog's title says
"word" but that's not accurate. It should be "phrase". Searching on
"this old house" will not match unless you have that exact substring.
It won't match on individual words, like "old", "house", and "this", so
it won't match on "this charming old house". It is a substring search.
A single character is also a string. Even the null character is a
string. Even a null string (which is not the same as the 1-character
NUL character) is called a string although it really means no characters
(i.e., it is a zero-length string), but Outlook won't let you test on
string length.

If you tried it then you know the rule would've worked. If you really
need the hand-holding, below is my copy of a "Blank Subject" rule:

Apply this rule after the message arrives
permanently delete it
except if the subject contains 'a' or ... or 'z' or '0' or ... or '9'
stop processing more rules

No, Outlook doesn't let you specify a range using "...". That would
allow simplifying the coding of the rule and make it much shorter than
having to specify 36 phrases (or substrings) to search for, and why I
mention that some users just test for vowels (they don't get messages
where the subject has non-vowel Welch or Jewish words, don't have all
numbers, and don't use sentences like "Hmm, Mr. MJB, TV? Tsk, tsk.").
The "..." above is just used to indicate that there are more phrases
(substrings) in the test condition but obviously you should be able to
figure out what the rest should look like.

If your e-mail client won't let you compose e-mails with a blank subject
to test the rule, go use Yahoo Mail as they will let you compose and
send a message with no subject. If your rule permanently deletes the
message as mine does, temporarily change it to just deleting the message
so you see it get moved into the Deleted Items folder, or add the clause
to popup a notify window with a message saying something like, "Message
received with blank subject has been deleted."

If you don't believe me, just go do a Google search on '+Outlook +"blank
subject"' to find many others that use the same solution. 

-- 
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