Our Help Desk regularly gets calls from people who are having trouble with too many junk emails go into their inbox or too many real emails going into their junk mail folder.

While most spam emails should be caught by a spam filter long before they get to your desk, there are occasional ones that will get through and lots of other emails (from mailing lists, notifications, overzealous forwarders, etc.) that also find their way to your inbox. These can be time-wasting and annoying.

Thankfully there are a few things you can do with Microsoft Outlook 2007 to help keep your inbox clean (note – not all of these things will work with earlier versions so if your software is out of date you should update it). Here are five quick suggestions to improve your inbox:

1. Use Microsoft Outlook – we still find tons of people using Outlook Express. It doesn’t have a junk mail folder and limits your ability to manage your email effectively. It also frequently gets corrupted which can cause you to lose your emails.
2. Install Microsoft Updates Regularly – Microsoft regularly updates Outlook and its junk mail filtering abilities and it’s important to regularly install these (we manage this process for our Worry-Free Network Care clients).
3. Change Junk Mail Filter Settings – You can easily change the sensitivity of your Outlook junk mail filter if you’re getting too much spam in your inbox or if legitimate messages are going into your junk folder. You can do this by going into your junk mail folder; right clicking on a message; selecting “junk mail”; and then clicking “junk mail options”. From there you can choose which level of filtering you’d like.
4. Add People to Blocked or Safe Senders Lists – Outlook has lists that help you ensure your junk mail filter works as effectively as possible. To stop unwanted emails from getting into your inbox, add the sender to your blocked list by right-clicking the message; going to junk email; and clicking “Add Sender to Blocked Senders List.” To add someone to your safe senders list and ensure their emails go into your inbox you follow the same process.
5. Add a Rule for Reoccurring Messages – If you’re getting email from a particular mailing list you can create a rule to ensure it goes into your junk mail (if blocking them as a sender won’t work). Many of our clients will also see ****SPAM**** in front of suspected spam emails as it’s one of several levels of spam filtering we employ. It’s a good idea to create a rule to have these go into your junk automatically. Rules can be created by going to “Tools” and then “Rules and Alerts” in the menu.

Along with these steps, it’s important you check your junk mail folder regularly to ensure legitimate emails haven’t been routed there.

If you’re interested in learning more, there’s a good 20-minute training video on the Microsoft website that goes into more detail. I’ve taken some of the information for this blog from it and it provides several other tips for preventing spam. You can watch it by clicking here.

Feel free to give us a call if you need more help.