Rawr!

Here’s what I want a solution to:

Microsoft Exchange uses the typical Outlook rules, except that they’re stored on the server. This is nice, because you can automatically sift through and sort emails before you ever see them in Outlook or Outlook Web Access.

These rules permit emails to be automcatically forwarded or redirected. Forwarding works in the same style as manual forwarding, in which the subject line is prepended with “FW:” and the original headers lie within the message. Redirecting, on the other hand, obliterates the original headers and makes it seem that the email was sent directly to the person the email is redirected to.

Those options aren’t bad, in and of themselves. Problems arise when emails are sent to multiple people or to a mailing list that you’re on–all that information is lost, and it may not be clear from the context of the message if the message was actually sent directly to me.

The only solution I can come up with is to have a complex set of rules for the various mailing lists I’m on–some get redirected, some get forwarded.

Another rule I want to have in Outlook/Exchange: the ability to change the subject of the message. I want to prepend “[All Campus Shit]” to emails sent to the entire campus, for instance. Can’t do that, either.

Grr.