Message Executive 2003 Help

Message Clerk

The Message Clerk allows you have Message Executive prompt you when you don't have management rules set up to move messages out of your Inbox.  This can be very useful in setting up Message Executive's management rules and ensuring your inbox never gets to filled up with old messages.

If a Management Rule does not exist, prompt me after I read a message that is in my Inbox, and ask me what I would like to do with the message.

This check box allows the Message Clerk to prompt you about messages that you don't currently have management rules set up for.  If you don't have a management rule for a message two things can happen.  The message will stay in your Inbox forever until to manually move it, or it can be moved by the Message Executive default rule if you have it turned on.  To save yourself a lot of time and energy in managing your old e-mail, creating a management rule for certain types of messages or from particular people will reduce the amount of time you need to organize and maintain your mailbox.  MADSolutions recommends you leave this setting turned on (checked).  If however you would rather not be prompted, turning this option off means Message Executive will never prompt you to create a management rule after you finish reading a message.

If a Management Rule does not exist and [  ] old messages exist in my 'Inbox' or 'Sent Items'

This setting has is based on the number of messages from a particular sender you have in either your inbox or sent item.  Message Executive will check your inbox and sent items from time to time to see if you have a certain number of messages that probably could be moved into a different folder according to who the message was sent by or sent to.  The default is 10 messages, however if you want management rules created if you receive more than 3 or 4 messages from someone, you can change this setting accordingly.

The above setting however has 3 different options in terms of what will happen when Message Executive encounters the number of messages you've specified above.  The options are as follows:

--- Do not prompt me to do anything with the messages.

This is the equivalent of turning the option off all together so regardless of how many messages you have received from or sent to a particular person, Message Executive will never prompt you.

--- Please prompt me to create a Management Rule
          Don't prompt me more than [ ] times to create a Management Rule.

This option is what MADSolutions recommends as the most effective way to create management rules.  If Message Executive finds the number of messages specified in the previous section, it will prompt you to do something with the messages.  This makes it very easy to create Management Rules initially for the people that you have a number of messages from.  The second portion of the option is used to determine how many time Message Executive should prompt you for these types of messages within any given Outlook session.  If you have a number of messages from a number of different senders, after Message Executive prompts you the number of times specified, it will no longer prompt you again during that Outlook session.  This is to ensure Message Executive does not continually prompt you to clean up your mailbox when you're not in the mood to do so.

--- Automatically create a new folder based on the Global Settings and create the Management Rule without prompting.

This option allows Message Executive to go ahead and create management rules when it finds the number of messages specified above for a particular sender.  For example:  If you have the setting set to 10 messages and you have hundreds of messages in your Inbox from 20 different people; if Message Executive finds 10 messages for a particular person, it will automatically create a Management Rule for the sender, create a folder under the default specified in the Global Settings (such as Old Mail) and then move the messages to it automatically.  MADSolutions recommends caution in using this option since Message Executive makes the decisions for you based on the criteria you've specified and it may be difficult for you to remember you've turned the option on.  In some cases however this option may be desirable if dealing with hundreds of messages a day and manual management of the messages that are old is not desired to any extent.