How To Configure Outlook 2000 To Filter Messages

See also: Introduction Eudora (PC) Eudora (Mac) Outlook 2002

1. From Outlook with Outlook Today or In box active, click on the Tools menu then choose the Rules Wizard option.


2. From the Rules Wizard dialogue box click the New button on the right


3. Check messages when they arrive as seen below, then click Next at the bottom


4. Scroll down the list of conditions and place a check mark next to the "with specific words in the message header" condition

When you do this the Rule description area in the bottom half of the window will now include this condition.

5. Cick on specific words in the Rule description area to edit.


6. Type in Gauge=XXXXX as shown, then click OK at the Search Text dialog box. The number of X's determine at what level messages will be filtered. Each X represents a 10% probability that a message is spam. In this case, there are 5 X's, so any message with a 50% or greater probability will be filtered. Fifty percent is a good place to start. You can tune it later if you find that too many or too few messages are being detected as spam. Make it more sensitive by using fewer X's, or less sensitive by adding more.


7. At the Rules Wizard dialog box, click next.


8. Place a check mark next to move it to the specified folder. When you do this the Rule description area is modified again with this new instruction.


9. Click on the word specified in the rule description area to choose which folder these messages will be sent to.

10. Click Mailbox (where name is indicated above, your name will appear)

11. Click the New... button on the right to create a folder for the Spam filtered email.
12. Type in a name for the new folder (in this case SPAM but you can name the folder whatever you want).
13. In the Folder contains: section, make sure it is set to Mail Items. If not, click the drop down arrow and click on Mail items.
14. Click OK at the bottom of the Create New Folder dialog box.


15. If this dialog box appears, click NO. If you do not get this dialog box in means that you have previously checked "Don't prompt me about this again"


16. The folder is created and highlighted, click OK


17. At the Rules Wizard dialog box, click Next.
18. Do not check anything in Add any exceptions, just click Next at the bottom.

19. Type in a name (in this case Spam Filter) for the rule
20. Place a check mark next to Turn on this rule.
21. Click Finish at the bottom.


22. When you are done creating Rules, click OK at the bottom of the Rules Wizard dialog box to close the Rules Wizard.

False Positives

    As discussed earlier, the spam filtering is never 100%. If you subscribe to commercial mailing lists, these messages will likely be detected as spam. If you have too many problems with false positives, you can simply remove the rule and deal with spam by hand as it arrives. If you only have a few mailing lists or senders which trigger a false positive, you can create a new rule for each of them to override the spam filter.

    If you find that legitimate email is being tagged as SPAM, you can set up additional Rules using the same process described above to move the mail you want into different folders. The key is these additional rules must be checked before the SPAM rule. You can change the order in which Rules are processed using the Move Up and Move Down buttons located underneath the Apply rules.


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