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Stop Spam Now With Message Rules
Instructions for Outlook
Outlook has an easy to use Rules Wizard. You can use the Wizard to send a message that you are on vacation, move messages to certain files, and delete messages from certain people. Using the Wizard makes this an easy to use option for e-mail management. We recommend that you use it in this case for stopping spam.
Outlook Instructions
- Click Tools in the top menu bar.
- Click Rules Wizard and then New.
- Select a condition in the first window pane. We selected "move messages based on content".
- In the bottom window pane, click on an underlined item and enter a word, phrase or address as requested based on the rule.
- We clicked on "apply this rule with specific words in the subject or body".
- When we clicked on the underlined "specific word", we entered our keyword to sort which items would be considered spam.
- We also had a phrase in the window pane that said "move it to the specified folder".
- We clicked the underlined "folder" and selected delete.
- Click Next.
- Continue adding rules as you desire.
- Click Finish. Your rule is now activated.
Instructions for Microsoft Outlook Express
Outlook Express has a different interface, but does essentially the same thing. You can use rules to block senders and filter your e-mail messages. It does not have as many options as Outlook, but works great for filtering spam!
Outlook Express Instructions
- Click Tools in the top menu bar. Then click Message Rules.
- Make sure to click Mail (not News).
- Select a condition in the first window pane. We selected "when the message body contains specific words".
- Select an action in the second window pane. Here we selected "delete it".
- In the third window pane, click on the underlined value and assign it a word, phrase, or address. Click on the underlined item in this window and enter your keyword like "mortgage" or "permanent fatal error". You can add as many words as you choose in this screen. You can even highlight the rule number and change the name to something like Spam Buster, if you choose. Click Okay
- Click Okay again. (Make sure you click Okay not Cancel!) Your rule is now activated.
Our Recommendations
We recommend that you review your deleted items folder for spam that you have already discarded to see if certain words pop up consistently. We used mortgage, returned mail, permanent fatal error, and several other keywords when we set up our rules.
Our Team was being innundated with mail caused by the auto-responder on our Web site that had been sending a mail acknowledgement to the spammer and which was then subsequently refused by Yahoo or Hotmail as the spammer's e-mail addresses were fictitious. These auto-responder messages were being bounced back to us in huge numbers. When we created Message Rules and used the words "permanent fatal error", "returned mail" as our keywords, our staff got one or two e-mails instead of 20 each time we downloaded mail.
If you are like many others being besieged by pornographic or sex related product e-mails, Message Rules may just be the answer you are looking for to stop those annoying messages now! We think that after you reap some of the benefits of a more manageable mail load, you will say "how did I ever live with out Message Rules!"