Remove all rules in Outlook at once

Today my Outlook was messed up a bit and several rules didn't work correctly any more.

I had a good backup but I found out that if I imported the rules-backup, the original rules were not replaced but instead the imported rules were added to the list. So you need to remove all all the rules by hand first and then import the backup. My Outlook contains more than 100 rules and I had to delete and confirm them all one by one. There is no setting in Outlook that lets you remove all rules at once.

Fortunately I found the following website which show a commandline switch to start Outlook and remove all rules:
Start > Run > outlook /cleanrules

I found out there are a lot commandline switches to start Outlook:
www.howto-outlook.com/howto/commandlineswitches.htm

This isn't Excel related at all but I found it interesting enough to share.

Filed under: General on February 9th, 2007 by Bastien | 18 Comments »

18 Responses to “Remove all rules in Outlook at once”

  1. Robert, on October 26th, 2007 at 4:54 pm Said:

    Remove all rules in Outlook at once
    It helped me a lot. Thanks.

  2. Serge, on November 18th, 2007 at 11:06 am Said:

    Thx…

  3. User, on November 27th, 2007 at 11:17 pm Said:

    I've been Googling this all morning!!! Thanks!

  4. Sajja, on December 5th, 2007 at 7:36 am Said:

    This command removed all rules in outlook.
    Thanks a lot.

  5. Maarten, on January 7th, 2008 at 4:40 pm Said:

    This solved my problem that anoyed me for so long…

    Tanx!

    Maarten

  6. Peter, on March 6th, 2008 at 8:41 am Said:

    Thx,

    I needed the clearclientrules as I could remove any rules anymore through the normal UI

    Very helpfull
    Peter

  7. Nicholas, on March 9th, 2008 at 2:09 am Said:

    Had errrantly imported outlook 207 rules into 2003

    That went bad, but could not delete.

    This command worked great!

  8. Chris, on April 9th, 2008 at 2:06 pm Said:

    Fantastic! I've been searching the Internet all week for a quick easy solution. That website was excellent.

  9. Rahul, on April 21st, 2008 at 12:02 am Said:

    Thank you very much!!!!

    Excellent !!!

  10. Deleep, on October 22nd, 2008 at 5:05 pm Said:

    Excellent share my friend!!!

  11. Muhammad Asif, on November 13th, 2008 at 12:25 pm Said:

    It is an excellent command to ridoff the outlook rules applied on folders at once

  12. Steve D, on November 20th, 2008 at 3:57 pm Said:

    Worked great. I needed that!!!

  13. Balakrishna. R, on December 13th, 2008 at 9:49 am Said:

    Thanks you very much. !!!!!!!

  14. Claus Valgren, on January 14th, 2009 at 4:02 pm Said:

    Thank you, worked great !!!

  15. Murali, on February 6th, 2009 at 7:46 am Said:

    Yeah it removed all the inactive rules created unknowingly by
    my customer while he wants to create a rule for his friends.
    This command helped me a lot……………..

    Thank You very much………

    Muralidharan

  16. santhakumar, on March 10th, 2009 at 7:24 am Said:

    Thank You very much….Great

    M.S.Santhakumar

  17. Sameul, on April 6th, 2009 at 7:15 am Said:

    tks for sharing.

  18. Sameul, on April 8th, 2009 at 7:38 am Said:

    really thank you for the sharing. The problem had been solved.

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