Guidelines for filtering SPAM

· Outlook 2003
    · Outlook 2000
    · Entourage 2004
    · Other email programs

Managing unsolicited email
Email entering the University network is scanned, assessed and marked on its likelihood to be unsolicited email. [more]

Setting your SPAM filter in Microsoft Outlook 2003

To filter unsolicited email (SPAM) in Microsoft Outlook, you need to create a rule that moves any message identified as SPAM into a separate folder.

Step 1

Create a SPAM folder in Outlook. Right click on your Inbox icon and choose New Folder... from the menu list.

Step 2

Name the new folder, SPAM and select OK. This is the folder that email identified as SPAM will be moved to.

Step 3

In Outlook, from the Tools menu, select Rules and Alerts.... (If not all your menu options appear at once, you may need to click on the downward arrow at bottom of the menu list to display all your choices.)

Step 4

Select the New Rule... button to create a new rule.

Step 5

Select Start from a blank rule. Make sure that Check messages when they arrive is selected. Click the Next > button.

Step 6

Scroll through the list of conditions and place a tick in the box for condition, with specific words in the message header. In the Step 2: Edit the rule description window, click on the text, specific words.

Step 7

Type in the text: X-Spam-Level: *** [This text is case sensitive. After the colon there is a single space followed by three asterisks.] Click the Add button.

The mail server assigns a number of asterisks to all incoming mail based on the likelihood that it is SPAM. The higher the number of asterisks, the more likely it is SPAM. Using less than three asterisks may filter email that is not SPAM (ie. wanted email). You may adjust the number of asterisks later to suit your specific filtering needs.

Step 8

When you have clicked the Add button, the search phrase will appear in the lower window. Now click the OK button and the Next > button to proceed to the next step.