Inbox Cleanup

With OAS, you can clean up your Outlook inbox by processing recurring email quickly and efficiently. Instead of repeatedly moving the same messages manually, OAS can do this for you based on rules you define yourself.

On this page

• Using Inbox Cleanup
• Creating and testing rules
• Automatically processing new email
• Analysing your mailbox
• Results and monitoring

Clean up your Outlook inbox with Inbox Cleanup

Inbox Cleanup uses rules that determine which email OAS should recognise and what should happen to it. You manage these rules from Rule Management. Here you can see all existing rules and create new rules, edit existing rules or temporarily disable rules.

At the top of the overview, you can search and filter by type and status. This is particularly useful once you have created several rules. Select a rule to view or change its settings directly below the overview.

A rule can, for example, check the sender, email address or subject of a message. You then decide what OAS should do with the matching email and to which Outlook folder the message should be moved.

Before using a rule, you can check it with Test rule. OAS then shows which messages match the configured conditions without immediately applying the rule to your mailbox. This allows you to check first whether the rule does what you expect.

Use New, Save, Duplicate and Delete to manage your rules. With Active, you determine whether a rule can actually be used by Inbox Cleanup.

The principle is then simple: you define the rules, Inbox Cleanup carries them out.

Creating and testing rules

You can create an Inbox Cleanup rule in two ways. You can click New in Rule Management and enter the rule yourself, but it is usually quicker to use an existing email as the starting point.

To do this, right-click a message in Outlook and choose OAS → New rule. OAS copies information from the selected message and opens the new rule in Rule Management. This means you do not have to enter details such as the sender or email address manually.

Give the rule a recognisable name and then determine how OAS should recognise the message. You can use the sender, email address and subject, among other criteria. Then select the destination folder where matching messages should be placed.

You do not have to apply a new or modified rule to your mailbox immediately. First click Test rule. OAS checks which messages match the conditions, allowing you to see in advance whether the rule does what you expect. Adjust the rule if necessary and test it again.

When you are satisfied with the result, save the rule and make sure Active is enabled. From that point onwards, OAS will apply the rule and process emails that match it.

Tip: do not make a rule more specific than necessary. If all messages from a particular sender can be processed in the same way, the sender alone is often sufficient. Use the subject, for example, when different types of messages from the same sender need to be processed differently.

Automatically processing new email

Inbox Cleanup can automatically process new email as soon as it arrives in Outlook. OAS uses the active Inbox Cleanup rules that you have configured.

When Outlook is running and a new message arrives, OAS checks whether the message matches one of your rules. If it does, the configured action is performed automatically. You do not need to start Inbox Cleanup manually each time.

You decide which rules are used for this. Only rules configured as Active can be applied automatically. If you temporarily do not want to use a rule, you can disable it without deleting it.

You can test new rules before activating them. This allows you to check which email is recognised by the rule before OAS starts automatically processing new messages according to that rule.

Important: automatic processing takes place while Outlook is running. OAS is an Outlook add-in and does not process new email when Outlook is not running.

Analysing your mailbox

With Analysis, you can see which recurring email is still in your Inbox. OAS groups messages by sender, among other criteria, and shows how often they occur. This allows you to quickly identify email for which it would be useful to create a new Inbox Cleanup rule.

You can search the results and determine the minimum number of messages that must be present before a sender appears in the overview. You can also choose to show only email for which no Cleanup rule currently exists.

From the overview, you can directly create a rule for a sender that has been found. If you want to process several identified senders in the same way, you can select them and create rules for them in one go.

Analysis does not make any changes to your email. It is intended to provide insight into what is still in your Inbox and to help you create new rules from there.

Results and monitoring

On the Overview tab, you can see what Inbox Cleanup has done and whether automatic processing is working correctly. The counters at the top provide an immediate overview of the number of active rules, how many messages have been processed today and this month, and whether any errors have occurred.

Under Inbox Cleanup status, you can see the most important settings and the status of automatic processing. It also shows when Inbox Cleanup was last active.

Under Recent activity, you can see the most recently processed messages. This allows you to easily check whether Inbox Cleanup is active and which email has recently been processed by OAS.

You do not need to monitor this overview continuously. Inbox Cleanup works in the background while Outlook is running. The overview is mainly intended to let you quickly check afterwards whether everything is working as expected.

If errors occur, these are also shown in the overview. For more detailed technical information, you can consult the OAS Logging.

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