Regular Expression Rules in Outlook 2007?

Question

Is it possible to create rules in Outlook 2007 based on a regex string?

I'm trying to add a filter for messages containing a string such as: 4000-10, a four digit number followed by a dash and then a two digit number, which can be anything from 0000-00 to 9999-99.

I was using this as a regex: \b[0-9]{4}\-[0-9]{2}\b but the filter isn't working. I've tried a few other modifications as well with no luck. I wasn't able to find anything concrete online about whether Outlook even supports entering regexes into a rule, though, so I figured I would ask here in case I'm wasting my time.

EDIT: Thanks to Chris's comment below, I was able to implement this filter via a macro. I thought I would share my code below in case it is able to help anyone else:

Sub JobNumberFilter(Message As Outlook.MailItem)
    Dim MatchesSubject, MatchesBody
    Dim RegEx As New RegExp

    'e.g. 1000-10'
    RegEx.Pattern = "([0-9]{4}-[0-9]{2})"

    'Check for pattern in subject and body'
    If (RegEx.Test(Message.Subject) Or RegEx.Test(Message.Body)) Then
        Set MatchesSubject = RegEx.Execute(Message.Subject)
        Set MatchesBody = RegEx.Execute(Message.Body)
        If Not (MatchesSubject Is Nothing And MatchesBody Is Nothing) Then
            'Assign "Job Number" category'
            Message.Categories = "Job Number"
            Message.Save
        End If
    End If
End Sub

Regular Expression Rules in Outlook 2007?

2 Answers