How to use Important Mail Alert

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:
   
2. You'll see the tool window. Click New:
   
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:
   

   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:
   
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:

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:

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:
   
2. You'll see 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.

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:
   

   Also, an orange strip appears above email messages 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:

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: