How to Backup Outlook Rules in Both Outlook 2010 and 2013

Rules help you automate many of the standard tasks in Outlook and help you focus on other functional aspects of your Inbox. Just as it is essential to make a backup of your Outlook data files, it is always a smart move to make a back up copy of the Rules you created in Outlook. This will be beneficial when you have to reconfigure Outlook after a fresh OS installation, or when you want to migrate Outlook to a different computer as you don’t have to set up all your rules from the start. In this tutorial, you will learn how to backup Outlook Rules. The tutorial applies to both Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2013.

Steps to Backup Outlook Rules

1. Select the File tab and click Manage Rules & Alerts.

2. In the Rules and Alerts dialog box, select Options.

3. In the Options dialog box, click Export Rules.

4. In the Save Exported Rules as dialog box, in the File name box, enter a file name for the rules that you want to export and click Save.

The exported rules are saved with an .rwz extension and you can restore them whenever the need arises.

Restore Outlook Rules

To restore Outlook rules:

1. Select the File tab and click Manage Rules & Alerts.  You may get an error that states that “One or more rules may contain errors. Delete or modify these rules.”  The rules with errors will be listed in red and need to be fixed before proceeding further. You can either delete these rules or fix them by manually editing each one of them. The reason for the errors is that the rules could be for any number of reasons such as the PST file to which you are moving messages with a rule has been removed from your computer.

2. In the Rules and Alerts dialog box, select Options.

3. In the Options dialog box, click Import Rules.

4. In the Import Rules from dialog box, navigate to the location where you saved the RWZ file and click Open.

You may also encounter another error that reads like this: “Some of your rules do not have all their options set. If you save your rules, these rules with missing options will be deactivated. Do you want to save your rules?”

This error arises when you import rules that were previously exported from another machine or when you import from a different Outlook profile. This is because the folders do not exist in your new Outlook folders. You can resolve this by editing the rule with the error, clicking the underlined text for the specified folder target, and in the Choose a Folder dialog box click a valid folder in a .pst file that you are currently using.

If you are having difficultly with your rules, you can consider using an Outlook add on like Power Rules Manager.

Now that you know how to backup Outlook rules and restore them, you can save yourself a lot of time the next time you do a system upgrade.