My preferred Outlook Junk E-mail Settings

This came up this morning so I thought I’d take a second to speak to it.

For one, this not is by any means complete. There are hundreds of ways to combat spam (SPF/SenderID, RBLs, Heuristics, White/Black/Gray/Red/Green lists, International suffixes, the list goes on).

All I want to point out here is what I think is the most comprehensive strategy where the user is still in control of anything that “might” be spam (kill only stuff that is harmful such as viruses or so clearly spam that there is no chance of illegitimacy).  That control comes by way of the Outlook Junk E-Mail Folder settings.

First off, where it fits in a comprehensive (and really in this case, probably over engineered setup when it comes to finding out where a message got nuked). I.e. the best scenario here is whack the baddies up front and then flag messages after that for SCL to deliver to the Outlook client for chunking into Junk E-Mail…

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So, to the Red bits

From the Ribbon, choose Junk and then Junk E-mail Options (I’m sure you all know already that you can block troublesome meddlers when emails arrive and don’t end up in junk as well as easily/one click marking ones that were spam to no longer be that way…)

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Set to High.  Then just keep an eye on any misdiagnosed ones and set them not be blocked…

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Set these two options to minimize stuff that ends up in junk accidentally

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The rest of the settings (safe senders lists, etc.) work themselves out on a one by one message basis.