How To: Controlling Junk Email In Outlook

Here are some notes I created for a customer recently about controlling Junk Email/Spam in MS Outlook. These instructions can also be used for Outlook Express, but the wording of some commands may be slightly different. Since the notes I created were three pages long, I've broken them up into separated posts to keep it as easy to read for people as possible. Click the Outlook label at the bottom of this post to see other posts associated with MS Outlook.

To Control Junk E-Mail in Microsoft Outlook

1. Go to Actions/Junk E-mail to see the list of options available to you when viewing individual emails.

2. Choose Junk E-mail Options to access a dialog box which allows you to control spam as it arrives.

3. The Options tab allows you to set the level of filtering you want. It ranges from not applying a filter, to only allowing people you have previously identified as safe to send you emails. Most users will find that a Low filter is best applicable, however from the amount of spam you mentioned, I would recommend High to start with. Beyond that, you may need to help the computer learn which emails are or are not spam by identifying safe senders, or choosing certain words you don’t want to see.
4. The Safe Senders tab allows you to identify particular users who send you email as ‘safe’. This means that email sent from that address will always be considered safe and never be considered spam/junk.
5. The Safe Recipients tab allows your emails to be identified by the user you are sending email to as ‘safe’. This will usually only work if they are also using MS Outlook.
6. The Blocked Senders tab allows you to identify users as repeated senders of spam/junk. Some email programs limit how many addresses you can store there, but if you are using office 2003 or 2007, I do not believe there is a limit.