Filtering E-mails in Hotmail

Have you ever wondered how to have certain e-mails go to a specific folder when they come in instead of going to your Inbox?  If you go to Hotmail options and follow these instructions, it should be pretty easy to do so.  Suppose you have e-mails coming from someone special and you want those e-mails in a folder for easy access.

The first thing to do is log into Hotmail and go to your mailbox.  Click on Options on the top right of the screen and then click on More Options.

You will be directed to another screen within Hotmail.  Find "Customize your mail" and then click on "Automatically sort e-mail into folders" underneath it.

 When you see the screen below, click on New Filter.  Note: if you already have an e-mail filter, it will show here too.

First, you need to choose what part of the e-mail you would like to filter from.  You can choose from 4 options:
     1) From Address - This is the e-mail address of the sender
     2) From Name - This is the name of the sender
     3) Subject - This is the subject of the e-mail
     4) To or Cc lines - This would be the recipient of the e-mail or anyone that was copied (Cc)

Next you will choose how the filter will work for the text that you supply.  There are 6 options for this:
     1) contains - if the specified portion of the e-mail contains any of the text supplied
     2) ends with - if the specified portion of the e-mail ends with the text supplied
     3) equals - if the specified portion of the e-mail equals the text supplied
     4) doesn't contain - if the specified portion of the e-mail does not contain the text supplied
     5) starts with - if the specified portion of the e-mail starts with the text supplied
     6) contains word - if the specified portion of the e-mail contains the whole word of the text supplied

Next you would type in the text (if you haven't done so already).  For example, you could say "Filter e-mails where the From Name starts with Sam".  If an e-mail came in from Sam Here, then the e-mail will be filtered.  After doing that first step, it's on to the second step.

The second step is "Where do you want to put the filtered messages".  There is an option for the Inbox, but since they are originally going into the Inbox, then I don't see why you would need this option.  The other options are Junk, New Folder, and Delete.  The Junk option would move the filtered e-mails into the Junk folder.  For the New Folder option, you specify the folder where the e-mails would go.  The last option you can choose is Delete, which is good if you just want to delete the e-mails as they come in.

Click on the Save option on the bottom right and then you will have your new filter set up.  There is an option to edit or remove a filter if you need to.