When it comes to managing your email, Outlook rules can be a lifesaver. But what happens when you need to move those rules to a new computer or account?
If you have to recreate all the rules available in outlook on your precious computer, it’s a painful task, but if it comes to multiple rules, it is easy to export and import the rules.
In this post, we’ll walk you through how to import and export Outlook rules so you can keep your email organized no matter where you are.
Steps to Export and Import Rules
After exporting & import the rules, you can utilize rules to do various tasks faster and automatically. Outlook application users face this issue because Outlook saves rules locally.
Exporting and Importing feature is available in Outlook by default, you neither have to use any third-party platform, nor any internal modification like VBA Coding required.
Export Rules from Outlook
To export rules from Outlook, follow the steps:
- Step 1: – Open Outlook >> click on the home tab available in the top left corner of the screen.
- Step 2: – Here you will get an option for Rules, click on the drop-down and select Manage Rules & Alerts. Alternatively, you can also click on the File tab >> Manage Rules and alerts.
- Step 3: – Here you will get a button called Options. Just click on that.
It is also important to select the email address from the drop-down list (apply changes to this folder), and the list of rules visible on the screen depending on the selection.
- Step 4: – Options Dialog box appears, which consists of two options i.e. [Export Rules and Import Rules]
- Step 5: – Click on Export to collect existing rules. the file will export on the outlook folder location by default, you can change the location which would be easily searchable.
- Step 6: – Name your file and the file type are (*.rwz)
Click Save, that’s the end of exporting rules, you will see the file icon available on your desired location where you saved it.
Now that file is easily transportable, you can send it through email or send the copy through a pen drive or any other external drive. You can transfer that file anywhere in order to import that later.
Import Rules in Outlook
Importing Rules in Outlook is similar to exporting rules, the only difference is you need to click the Import Rules button in the Options dialog box.
Following up to step 4, the Options Dialog box appears, which consists of two options i.e. [Export Rules and Import Rules]
Click Import Rules, now you need to import the file from the location you have saved while exporting.
Navigate to the folder in which you saved your rules backup file, select the .rwz file, and then click Open.
As you can see from the list of rules on the ‘Rules and Alerts dialog box, your custom rules have been successfully created.
Click ‘OK’ on the ‘Options’ dialog box to close it and return to the Rules and Alerts dialog box.
‘If you have checked your email before importing your rules, you can now run your rules on the email you have already received.’
Click ‘Run Rules Now‘ on the toolbar above the list of rules in the Rules and Alerts dialog box.
Some of the imported rules won’t work on your new computer because there are specific folders, created on the original computer, but are not available on the other computers.
Conclusion
Finally Exporting and importing rules is like importing and exporting contacts, tasks, and many more. It will help the users to get rid of creating the rules in the Outlook application.
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