Is Your Microsoft Email Spam Filter Overzealous? Here’s How to Fix It

[Participant @joshua]

For the most part, Windows Outlook Mail, from whence you access your Outlook email, does a pretty damn good job in sorting out your mails and filtering spam mails away from genuine email messages. However, in some instances, it seems to get overzealous and bundle even legitimate email messages into the spam or junk folder. If you are one of those who occasionally experience this issue, this article is dedicated to show you how to fix the problem.

Nothing can be disconcerting like when you search endlessly for emails in your inbox folder after having confirmed they were sent to you, only to later discover they were mistakenly dumped in your spam folder. If you want to be sure future emails don’t end up perennially stuck in your spam folder, then follow the following guide to get this problem sorted once and for all.

While this problem is often associated with Outlook, it also affects all the email Top Level Domains (TLDs) in the Microsoft ecosystem, including the older live.com and Hotmail.

Once way of overcoming this problem is by making sure you add all email addresses to your safe senders list. This way, Outlook will never assume messages from those addresses are likely to be spam and mistakenly dump them in the spam folder.

How to Prevent Outlook from Spamming Email

In order for you to indicate which email address Outlook should never categorize as spam and throw into the spam folder, all you have to do is locate the safe sender list and manually type in the email address into the list. Here’s how to go about it:

1. Locate the Settings gear icon at the top right of outlook.com and click it
2. Go to View All Outlook Settings located at the bottom of the pop –up menu
3. Proceed to Mail→ Junk Mail
4. Click Add
5. Then type in a senders email address in the space indicated in the area marked as ‘Safe Senders’.
6. Finally, click Save at the top of the page

Please, note that if you want to enter a domain and be sure no emails listed in that domain is ever designated for the spam folder, all you have to do is just type the test portion (excluding the “@”sign). For instance, enter gmail.com to unblock all Gmail messages that otherwise might end up in the spam folder.

How to Use the Safe Senders’ List

You have to be careful which email address you add to your safe senders list. While it makes a lot of sense to allow all Gmail.com email addresses to deliver messages to your inbox, it’s a not a good idea to allow too many non-official domains to clutter your safe senders list, lest your inbox becomes a dumping ground for all kinds of junk mail. Thus, scrutiny is the key here.

One last thing: if you wish to add a mailing list to your safe senders list, it’s likely that won’t work, reason being that the mailing list is likely not forwarded directly to you, but to some distribution list which then forwards the particular email to you. When this is the case, the safe senders list might not be much helpful in keeping emails out of the spam folder. In such cases, what you do is add the domain or email address to the safe mailing lists area, which you will find just under the safe senders list.

We hope this article was helpful in solving the issue with Outlook erroneously forwarding crucial mails to your spam folder? Feel free to drop a comment in the comment box below. Thanks.

 

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