How to create rules to automatically set received emails as high importance in Outlook?

Author Sun Last modified 2025-04-07

In Outlook, the important messages will be covered if your received emails are hundreds and thousands one day. In this article, I introduce some tricks on set some emails as high importance which can stand-out in mess messages in Outlook.

Create a rule to automatically set emails as high importance

Set emails as importance with Kutools for Outlook

Create a rule to automatically set emails as high importance

In Outlook, the Rules function can help you to set emails as high importance.

1. Click "Home" > "Rules" > "Manage Rules & Alerts", click "New Rule" in the "Rules and Alerts" dialog.
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2. In the "Rules Wizard" dialog, select "Apply rule on message I receive" in "Start from a blank rule" section.
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3. Click "Next", check "with specific words in the subject or body" or other checkboxes as you need in "Step1" section, click "specific words" in "Step2" section, then add the words you use to mark emails as high importance based on.
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4. Click "OK" > "Next", in this window, check "mark it as importance" checkbox in "Step1", click "importance" in "Step 2" and select "High" from the "Importance" dialog.
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5. Click "OK" > "Next" > "Next", a dialog pops out to remind you if continue, click "Yes".
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6. In last window, keep "Turn on this rule" selected. Click "Finish" > "OK" to finish creating this rule.
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From now on, the messages you received which contains the specific text in subject or body will be marked as high importance automatically.
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Set emails as importance with Kutools for Outlook

As the Rules function is complex, here I introduce a handy tool – "Kutools for Outlook", its "Messages Reminders" function can list all important emails which contains specific texts for you.

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Free install Kutools for Outlook, and then do as below steps:

1. Click "Kutools Plus" > "Messages Reminders" > "Important messages Reminders Options".

2. In the "Important Message Reminder Options" dialog, under "General" tab, select the account you want to check important emails.

3. Click "Rules" tab, then click "New" to add the specific text you want to check if an important email based on one by one.

4. Click "OK" > "OK" to close dialogs.

5. Click "Kutools Plus" > "Messages Reminders" > "Messages Reminders" to enable this utility.

Now the emails contain the specific texts in body, subject or address will be seen as important emails and listed in the Important pane when they arrive.

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