You teach Outlook what to look for and what to do when it sees a message that meets the conditions you've set. Rules are a way to have incoming (or outgoing) messages sorted, filed, marked, or otherwise handled automatically. The rest of this page is for those people who decide to set up their rules in Outlook 2016 for Mac anyway. Our Create Rules in Outlook on the Web article We recommend that you use Outlook on the Web to create and manage your rules.