5 tips to keep e-mails out of your spam bin

Spam surveys state what many of us already know: that the amount of junk e-mail is on the rise. However, exact statistics vary: Internet security vendor McAfee claims 62 trillion spam mails were sent last year, while rival security company Norton says 350 billion went out in 2008.

One thing you can be certain of is that your spam filters are doing a lot of work these days. The trouble is, picking junk from the genuine isn’t easy. As a result, you have probably experienced the inconvenience of important e-mails from clients being redirected to your spam bin.

To avoid losing valuable customer orders, or instructions from your boss, you can quickly and easily save your Microsoft® Office Outlook® contacts to a safe sender list. This will make sure that messages from these contacts arrive in your inbox.

5 super-speedy steps
To add your Outlook contacts to the Safe Senders list, perform the following steps:

1. On the Outlook Tools menu, click Options.
2. On the Preferences tab, under E-mail, click Junk E-mail.
3. Click the Safe Senders or Safe Recipients tab.
4. Click Add.
5. In the Enter an e-mail address or Internet domain name to be added to the list box, enter the name or address you want added, and then click OK.

1-2-3. Rescue e-mail from your spam bin
If you have your Outlook Junk E-mail Filter set on a high level of protection, some of your genuine messages may go to your Junk E-mail folder – for example, e-mails from friends or customers that your filter has not seen before. To be safe, you should check your junk folder daily if you are expecting a crucial e-mail. But to make sure your filter knows not to move mails from certain people to your spam folder, follow these three steps:

1. In Mail, click the Junk E-mail folder in the Navigation Pane.
2. Right-click any message that you want to mark as not junk.
3. On the shortcut menu, point to Junk E-mail, and then click Mark as Not Junk.

Blue from your boss. Red for friends. Colour-coding
To help you identify e-mails from management or certain contacts, Outlook lets you colour-code e-mails. This means you won’t miss critical orders from head office or your loved ones.

To colour-code your e-mails:

1. Select a mail from someone you want to colour code.
2. Press Tools then click Organise. A pane will scroll down.
3. On the left side of that pane choose Using Colours. The name of the sender will now be visible in the above box.
4. Choose the option From. You’ll see the name field automatically adjusting when you select a message from someone else.
5. Choose a colour from the dropdown list and press Apply Colour.

Google and Yahoo can help too
Outlook has a lot of handy tricks for beating spam. But if you don’t use Outlook, other e-mail clients like Yahoo and Google also allow you to tag certain e-mails as junk, while they usually recognise senders loaded in your contacts as non-junk. It is worth investigating the features they offer to help you against spam.

In the battle against the spammers, it pays to be proactive. By using these Outlook features, you can make your inbox more efficient, and improve your chances of receiving the e-mails that matter most to you.