How to use Important Mail Alert

For Microsoft Outlook

Important Mail Alert is part of Add-ins Collection for Outlook. With this tool, you'll never miss important email messages in your Outlook.

How to work with the Important Mail Alert rules

Create a rule

The message you're waiting for might be from a certain person or it might contain certain text or numbers. To get notified when such a message reaches your inbox, create a rule. The tool will scan all incoming messages for the email address or keyword you specified in the rule and alert you when a message that meets the specified conditions arrives.

  1. To start creating a rule, click Important Mail Alert on the Ablebits tab in your Outlook:
    Open the Important Mail Alert window.
  2. You'll see the tool window. Click New:
    Add a new rule.
  3. Enter the text that will trigger an alert (a word, phrase, name, email address, or number), decide where to look for that text, select the corresponding checkboxes, and then click Add:
    Specify rule conditions.

    Note. If letter case is important for you, make sure there's a check mark next to Case-sensitive.

    Note. To use the asterisk and question mark as wildcards, select the Use wildcards option. If you want to look for the asterisk or question mark character itself, put it after a backslash in the search box: \* or \? accordingly. To look for the backslash character, use \\.

Edit a rule

You can always change any of your rules.

  1. Click Important Mail Alert on the Ablebits tab in your Outlook.
  2. Double-click the rule you want to change, or right-click it and select the Edit option from the menu. Also, you can select the rule that you're going to modify and click Edit:
    Edit a rule.
  3. Make the necessary changes and click Save.

Disable or enable a rule

To disable a rule, clear the checkbox next to it in the Important Mail Alert window and click Save:
Make a rule inactive.

To enable the rule again, select the corresponding checkbox and click Save.

Delete a rule

To delete a rule that you don't need anymore, hover the cursor over the rule in the Important Mail Alert window and click the cross mark icon:
Here is the cross mark icon.

Also, you can delete a rule by selecting it and clicking Delete on the toolbar or by right-clicking the rule and selecting the Delete option from the menu.

Use the Important Mail Alert options

Use Options to choose the accounts you want to be scanned and specify whether an alert is going to be removed after you open the corresponding email.

  1. In the Important Mail Alert window, click Options:
    Use Options.
  2. You'll see the Options window:
    Here is the Options window.
  3. By default, there's a check mark next to each of your accounts. If you don't want any of your accounts to be scanned, clear the checkbox next to it.
  4. If you want alerts to be automatically deleted after you open the corresponding email messages by double-clicking the alerts on the Important Mail Alert pane, select the Remove alerts after opening emails option.

Note. If later on you add another account to your Outlook, open Important Mail Alert, go to Options, make sure that there's a check mark next to each of the accounts you want to be scanned, and click OK.

How to work with alerts

Get and manage alerts

Important Mail Alert checks all the incoming messages for the text you specified in your rules.

  1. When an email that meets the specified conditions reaches your inbox, the Important Mail Alert notification message shows up:
    This is how the notification message looks like.

    Also, an orange strip appears above email messages on the Reading Pane:
    Important Mail Alert on the Reading Pane

  2. In the Important Mail Alert notification message, you can either click the See button to navigate to the Important Mail Alert pane or click the Cancel button to close the notification window.
  3. Open the email you've been notified of by double-clicking the alert on the Important Mail Alert pane.

Mark alerts as unread

After you double-click the alert to open the email you've been notified of, the alert is shown as read. If you want to keep the alert unread, right-click it and select Mark alert as unread:
The Mark alert as unread option

Note. If the Remove alerts after opening emails option is selected, alerts will automatically disappear.

Delete alerts

To remove an alert from the Important Mail Alert pane, hover the cursor over the alert and click the cross mark icon. Also, you can select the alert and press Delete on your keyboard or right-click the alert and select Remove from the menu:
The Remove option

Tip. To remove all the alerts at one go, press Ctrl+A and then press Delete on your keyboard. Also, you can right-click any alert and select Remove all alerts from the menu.

Responses

Jim Russell says:
April 26, 2021 at 5:34 pm

Is there an option to have a pop up show when an end user puts secure in the subject reminding them this email is being sent securely? I am looking for a way to setup an alert for this

I'm curious if it's possible to set wildcards in the mail alert, so you get a message on every email that arrives. is that possible?
If yes, how?

Hello Tobias,

Thank you for your question. If you'd like the add-in to notify you every time an email arrives, please try to create a rule using the @ sign as the Search text and selecting the Sender option to search in.

Hope this will work for you.

Does the rule alert carry across to other PC's signed in using the same email account?
Or do you need to duplicate the alert on each pc?

Katerina Bespalaya (Ablebits Team) says:
February 19, 2020 at 12:02 pm

Hello Brad,

Thank you for your questions.

Unfortunately, the rule for the same email account won't work on other machines if the add-in is not installed there. You will have to first install the add-in there and set a rule for Important Mail Alert anew. Alternatively, you can copy the file with your rule from C:\Users\USER_NAME\AppData\Roaming\Ablebits\Important Mail Alert on the machine where you're using it at the moment and paste it in the same folder on other machines after installing the add-in there. Hope this will help you.

Hi, is there a way to use sound alert along with regular notification when email arrives?

Hi Yuri,
thank you for your question. The Important Mail Alert utility uses the standard Windows notification sound and it is impossible to change it or add any new alert.
Please feel free to contact us again with any other comments.
Thank you.

Hi Yuri,
The tool scans all the Outlook accounts you select in the Options window, including shared folders. When the utility finds emails that fit your rule, it gives you a notification: visual and sound. However, there may be some issues with shared folders if you have limited permissions - in this case, the utility may not be able to scan the entire folder.
Thank you.

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