Outlook lets you create and tailor folder views in lots of methods, like including and eliminating columns or organizing and arranging messages. You can likewise apply rules to make Outlook screen messages in various ways based on their properties (like the sender, subject line, or timestamp). This is called conditional formatting. Let’s take a look at how it works.

Update: One of our readers gave our attention that conditional format is just readily available on the Windows version of Outlook and not the macOS version. Thanks, Christy!

Getting Started

To start setting up conditional formatting, head to View > > View Settings.

You can also access Advanced View Settings by right-clicking the folder head and picking the “View Settings” command.

The Advanced View Settings window lets you customize the folder view. Click the “Conditional Formatting” button.

This brings you to the Conditional Formatting window that you’ll be using to set up different guidelines for how messages are formatted.

The items displayed in the “Rules for this view” list are the default guidelines that come with an un-customized folder view. For instance, you can see that “Unread messages” are shown in bold, blue Segoe UI font with a size of 11 points.

How the Rules Work

The “rules” are the conditions that a message needs to satisfy for Outlook to apply the formatting. In the default rules, for instance, the “Unread Messages” guideline is activated when a message is marked as unread. When that guideline is triggered, Outlook utilizes the bold, blue, 11-point Segoe UI font style to display it.

Outlook applies guidelines in order from the top of the list. Guidelines greater up on the list take precedence over guidelines lower down. How does this work in practice? Let’s say you have two rules, one at the top of the list that changes the typeface to green, and one lower down in the list that alters the typeface to red. If a message meets the conditions of both guidelines, the typeface will be changed to green because that guideline is greater up on the list– the rule which sets the font style to red is ignored.

With the default guidelines, you can just alter the font style. You can’t erase default rules, or move the order around, or alter the conditions for the rule. You can turn default rules off however, by unchecking them in the “Rules for this view” list.

How to Add a New Rule

In the Conditional Formatting window, click the “Add” button. A brand-new rule called “Untitled” will be contributed to the list. Provide your guideline a name and then click the “Condition” button.

The Filter window lets you choose the condition, or conditions, that the mail needs to meet to be formatted.

We’re just going to utilize a basic example here and have it look for messages that were sent out by “Rob Woodgate” and contain the word “Outlook” in the Subject field.

To do this, initially click the “From” button, which opens the address book, and select a contact.

We add “Outlook” into the “Search for the word(s)” field, making sure that the “Subject Field Only” alternative is chosen from the “In” drop-down list. Click “OKAY” when you’re done.

Back in the Conditional Formatting, click the “Font” button.

We’re going to make messages that match the filter we established be displayed in purple and bold. Set yours up nevertheless you desire, click the “OKAY” button, click “OK” again to close the Conditional Formatting window, and then one more time to close the Advanced View Settings window.

The guidelines are applied immediately. You can see below that messages fulfilling our conditions are now strong and purple.

This is just a basic example– you can include great deals of conditions, even extremely complex ones. Back in that Filter window, you can switch over to the “More Choices” tab to see a bunch of extra conditions you can pick.

Here you can pick to match a message on whether:

Switch over to the “Advanced” tab, and you can produce intricate conditions.

The Advanced tab enables you to select any field from throughout Outlook, and select a condition that you wish to match. This could be rather basic, such as matching the sender to a specific address, but you have a great deal of choices to pick from. Let’s state you want your guideline to match emails that you received. Click the “Field” button, point to “Date/Time Fields,” and then click the “Received” option.

Click the “Condition” dropdown to select your condition.

The choices are much greater than you may anticipate:

And the other fields you can select offer comparable quantities of options.

Select your Condition, include a value, and click the “Add to List” button.

You can include as numerous conditions to the list as you like. To give you some concept of the number of fields there are, here’s a look at just the “All Mail fields” menu.

The “All Contact fields” menu has over four columns of alternatives– so many we couldn’t fit it into a sensible screenshot. We’re not going to go through each of the fields and conditions, however now you know where they are and how to use them.

You can set up several conditions in a rule to get things as specific as you like. Wish to have Outlook screen messages in a red 16pt typeface if they are from a specific contact, gotten in the last seven days, contain a specific word in the topic, and consist of an accessory? Not a problem.

How to Delete a Rule

If you’ve created a guideline and you no longer want it, it’s easy to erase. In the Conditional Formatting window, pick the rule you wish to erase and click the “Delete” button. Just bear in mind that you can only erase guidelines you’ve created– not Outlook’s integrated default rules.

You can include as lots of conditions as you like, and have as numerous guidelines as you like. And as we showed you previously, once you’ve got the conditional format guidelines establish the method you desire then you can copy the view to another folder, or to all folders if you want.

The items showed in the “Rules for this view” list are the default guidelines that come with an un-customized folder view. The “rules” are the conditions that a message has to fulfill for Outlook to use the format. In the default rules, for example, the “Unread Messages” guideline is activated when a message is marked as unread. Guidelines higher up on the list take precedence over guidelines lower down. You can’t erase default guidelines, or move the order around, or alter the conditions for the guideline.