Filtering Flagged Spam in Outlook Express
Using outlook or outlook express to move messages flagged by your ISP as potential spam out of your inbox, can remove much of the stress caused by an inbox flooded with junk mail.Many ISPs now have spam filters on their mail servers which can either automatically discard any mail they feel is potentially spam, or can flag the message as potential spam, for you to deal with. Letting the ISP delete any message they feel is spam, will result in them occasionally deleting real messages that you wanted. If you filter the spam yourself, then you can be certain you are not deleting any important messages.
Usually when you ISP flags a message as spam they add the text "[bulk]" or "[spam]" to the start of the message subject. By adding a mail rule, outlook and outlook express can automatically move these flagged messages into a separate folder, leaving your inbox clean. The once in a while you can quickly scan through your spam folder to make sure there are no important messages in it, before deleting all of the spam messages.
Creating a new mail rule
The steps for creating a new mail rule are very similar in outlook (where they are called inbox rules) and outlook express.
Start Outlook Express and click on the tools menu, then message rules and then mail. This should popup a new window titled New Mail Rule. If your ISP adds text to the subject to flag spam, then tick the "Where the Subject line contains specific words" option in the conditions list, and then tick the "Move it to the specified folder option" in the Actions list, so it looks like the picture on the right.
Next click on the link "contains specific words" in the Rule Description Box to specify the text your ISP uses to flag messages. In the Type Specific Words popup type the text your ISP uses in the top box, and click the add button then the OK button.
Now click on the link "specified" in the Rule Description Box, and Choose which folder you want to move the spam to. It may be a good idea to create a new folder specially for spam by clicking on the New button, if you don't already have a folder for spam messages.
Now the new mail rule is created click OK to go back to the Message Rules window. If you already have flagged spam in your inbox, click the "Apply Now.." Button to move the messages to your spam folder.
Now whenever new messages are downloaded that the ISP has flagged as spam, they will be automatically moved to your spam folder where you can check them as often as you want before deleting them all.
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