Prevent Outlook From Filtering Legitimate E-mail

Receiving unsolicited bulk e-mail messages, or "spam" as they are commonly known, is an annoyance everyone with an e-mail address must learn to manage. Fortunately, before they even reach your mailbox, LFCDS filters out on average 70 to 75 percent of all e-mail sent to the school, allowing only legitimate e-mail and some spam "stragglers" to finally reach your mailbox. From there, Microsoft Outlook's junk e-mail filter further evaluates each message and determines whether it should stay in your Inbox or be moved to your Junk E-mail folder.

While Outlook is reasonably accurate in detecting spam, false positives do occur where legitimate e-mail is moved to the Junk E-mail folder. Below you will find the steps you can take to review your Junk E-mail folder, move anything legitimate back to your Inbox, and, while you're at it, teach Outlook not to mark e-mail from a sender as spam ever again.

How to "whitelist" (allow) an e-mail address

1. In Microsoft Outlook, navigate to your Junk E-mail folder
   (Tip: The green number in brackets indicates how many messages are currently in your Junk E-mail folder)
   
    
2. For each message that is not spam, select that message and click the Not Junk button in the toolbar
   
    
3. On the dialog box that appears, make sure "Always trust e-mail from [email address]" is checked and click OK
   
    
4. The e-mail should now be back in your Inbox folder and the sender's e-mail address is now added to your Safe Senders List so it isn't blocked in the future

Did you know?

• You can do the opposite as well: to "blacklist" (block) an e-mail address, right-click on an e-mail from that recipeint and select Junk E-mail -> Add Sender to Blocked Senders List
• You can view or modify your Safe Senders & Blocked Senders lists by going to Actions -> Junk E-mail -> Junk E-mail Options...
• Spam compromises some 80 to 85 percent of all the e-mail in the world