Nobody likes spam, but whether we like it or not, spam seems to be very much a part of using email. Of course, there are spam filters and ways to avoid the worst of the junk mail, but what about the things you don’t consider spam, but you don’t always want to read right away. Why do you have to spend the first five minutes of every day deleting lists of notifications, advertisements and special offers from websites you might be interested sometimes at least? Yours, like almost all inboxes, probably needs a bit of help.

Dealing with Spam

The spam messages are simply emails you didn’t ask for and that you don’t want. Virtually all email accounts are constantly bombarded with spam, even if you’re supposed to be able to unsubscribe or block the messages. Some accounts definitely do a better job that others at blocking the irritating messages, and Outlook is no exception. Dealing with spam in Outlook however, tends to be a multi-surface approach.

First, when you set up your email accounts to import into Outlook, be sure you’re not importing the spam folder. This is especially true with Hotmail. When you go to import messages from Hotmail, set the Junk Mail folder to synchronize “Headers Only.” This will keep all of the spam messages from carrying over from Hotmail into your Outlook account.

Legitimate friends and companies will always include a From and a To address. Many spam messages do not. You can easily stop these messages from showing up in your folder by making them go directly to your trash instead. Sending empty To and From emails to the trash is as simple as resetting a few rules.

• In Outlook, select Tools and then Message Rules and then Mail.
• Then select New.
• In the box that appears, be sure the Where the From line contains people is properly checked. Then check the box where you see Where the To line contains people.
• Also check contains people directly under Rule Description.
• Type @ in the box there, and click on Add.
• Next, click on Options… and be sure that Message does not contain the people below is selected under Apply rule if:. Click on OK both times it appears.
• The last step is to do something with the email you’ve just filtered, so select the action you’d like to see under Select the Actions for your rule: and then complete the action under Rule Description if needed by leaving a descriptive name that makes sense for you now and in the future.
• Click on both OK options that appear.

Going through these steps will keep all of the random emails that appear to come from nowhere out of your box at least.

Filing and Filtering Mail

You can do the same sort of filtering with all of your other mail as well. Imagine how nice it would be to see only new emails from friends and family members you’re interested in hearing from without having to sort through online specials and emails about special promotions and coupons.

Naturally, you don’t want to send all of your coupons to the trash or file them away as spam – you’d like to have them there when you need them at least, but you can still do plenty of sorting so that you don’t have to see the almost-junk mail until you’re ready to find what you actually need. This is called filtering.

You can set up any number of filters in Outlook to instantly categorize all of the catalogs and coupons, the newsletters, the work messages and the friend and family emails. Normally everything just appears in your inbox in the order it’s received, but you can easily change the rules so that emails from certain parties go into certain folders or files called POPFile.

1. Your first step will be to be sure that your Outlook is configured to work with POPFile. In Outlook, go to the Mail tab and highlight your email account. Then click on Properties. On the Servers tab, you’ll double-click on Incoming mail (POP3) so that the field is highlighted.

2. Copy the highlighted row using Ctrl – C and then change the incoming mail (POP3) to 127.0.0.1

3. Click on Account name and then click on the Home key before clicking on Ctrl-V to paste the copied information in the field. The Account name field should now have your original Incoming mail server with a colon and then your username. For example “mail.username.com:username” should appear. Check to be sure it looks correct and then click on OK and Close.

4. Once you’re configured, open the POPFile User Interface from the Start menu. In the navigation bar select Buckets and then scroll down to find Maintenance.

5. You’re now ready to create buckets to help you sort out the various emails you get. You can make just two buckets if you’d like – spam and not-spam - or you can create more buckets to get your email life very organized. To create the buckets, simply type the name of your bucket in the line that reads Create bucket with name:. Click on Create to finish making each.

6. Take a note about the number of buckets you create because you’ll need to make a folder in Outlook for each of the buckets in order to sort through your emails in Outlook. Create the matching folders and then in Outlook Express select Tools then Message Rules and Mail….

7. Now, you’ll follow the same steps for each of the buckets you’ve just created.

• Click on New…
• Check the box for Where the Subject line contains specific words under Select the Conditions for your rule.
• Then check the box for Move it to a specified folder under Select the Actions for your rule.
• Click Next on contains specific words under Rule Description and type [bucket name] where “bucket name” is the actual name of your bucket.
• Click on Add and OK.
• On the next menu you’ll click on Copy it to the specified folder before highlighting the corresponding folder you just created and clicking OK. Name the rule something that makes sense and then click on OK until you’re finished.

Repeat this process for every one of the buckets you created and the next time you log into your account you’ll see a clean inbox waiting for you with all of your emails arranged in beautiful little piles and categories. It will feel great to be organized and even better to finally be in control of the hoard of mail you get every single day.