[drdave69]

My employer has just upgraded our desktops to XP. How do you handle Junk Email? I have tried a few things but still don't get the correct results. I copied my saved 'junk email senders list' into the XP Outlook file. It still doesn't recognize junk email on the list. I can manually add new junk to the list and it automatically moves it to the 'Junk E-Mail' folder but, how do set up a rule to automatically delete items in the 'Junk E-Mail' folder upon exiting Outlook?
I receive approximately 100 junk emails a day at work and dealing with them is becoming tiresome.

[Brian Lewis]

Who is your web hosting provider? The people who handle the email for your domain?
Most providers can turn on RBL filtering on their mail servers which will block 85% of the junk mail from ever getting into your mailbox.

If your ISP won't do this for you (whoever handles your pop3 email) then you could use a locally installed program like SA Proxy or Mcafee SpamKiller to filter spam/junk.

[drdave69]

I have no idea. There are thousands of employees on the same email server.

[MytMini]

Dave I feel your pain. I have had the same work email address for 14 years now and I get plenty of junk every day.

I have given up on trying to filter it out. Instead I write rules to let the good stuff in. Now this won't work for everyone , especially if you are in sales and get outside emails from new customers, but it works for me.

Go to Tools, Rules and Alerts
Click New Rule
Click Start from a blank rule
Click Check messages when they arrive
Click Next
Click Next (Which conditions do you want to check)
Answer Yes to the dialog
Click move it to the specified folder
Click on the word 'specified' in the step 2 box and select the Junk E-Mail folder or whatever folder you like
Click Next
Now you should be at the Exception step
Scroll down and click except if sender is in specified Address Book
Click on the word 'specified' in the step 2 box and select your address book
Click Next
I named this rule Unexpected
Click finish

Just to summarize... this will move any email sent to you from an email address NOT in your address book to the folder you chose. Thus filtering out any unexpected emails.

As for automatically deleting the 'Junk E-Mail' folder contents on exit you would have to use a macro for that. To use it you need to go to Tools, Macros, Visual Basic Editor. In the upper left corner of the screen you will have a Project1. Expand it and then expand 'Microsoft Office Outlook' and you should see a 'ThisoutlookSession'. Double-click the 'ThisOutlookSession' to get a code window up on the right side of the screen (may have already been there). Paste the following code into the code window (right side).

Private Sub FolderNames()

Dim objNS As NameSpace
Dim objFolders, objFolder
Set objNS = Application.GetNamespace("MAPI")

Set objFolders = objNS.Folders
For Each objFolder In objFolders
MsgBox objFolder.Name
Next
Set objNS = Nothing

End Sub

Private Sub Application_Quit()

Dim objItem As Object
Dim objNS As NameSpace
Dim objDestFolder As MAPIFolder

Set objNS = Application.GetNamespace("MAPI")
Set objDestFolder = objNS.Folders.Item("AshNDon").Folders.Item("Junk E-mail")

If MsgBox("About to delete all items in the 'Junk E-Mail' folder.", vbQuestion + vbOKCancel + vbDefaultButton2) = vbCancel Then
Exit Sub
End If

For Each objItem In objDestFolder.Items
objItem.Delete
Next
Set objDestFolder = Nothing
Set objNS = Nothing
Set objItem = Nothing

End Sub

Click somewhere in the FolderNames subroutine and press F5. This will run the code and give you the names of the top level folders that exist. You will need to replace the 'AshNDon' in the Application_Quit event with the primary folder that you use for your email.

Hope this helps.
Donald
Sr Software Developer Analyst from 8-5, 5 days a week

[ 02-16-2004, 05:09 PM: Message edited by: MytMini ]

[MytMini]

Another handy thing I forgot to mention is that at the Excection step there is an option 'except with specific words in the senders address'. I use this as well so I can let anything from @xyz.com through. This would work well if you work a lot with a particular outside company and don't want anything sent from them to get lost.

I hope all of this helps...

[Brian Lewis]

You might ask the tech guys at AFLAC.COM if they will enable RBL filtering or have any plans to enable such filtering. This will be about 85% effective. To get another 10% effective they would have to start using some sort of Razor/Pyzor/DCC community filtering. Most corporations are enabling Spam Filters before their mail servers, it literally blocks about 80-85% of the email (yes that is how much is junk) and also usually will do full virus scanning as well.
I've deployed a few servers using Linux running MailScanner + MailWatch + SpamAssassin + ClamAV virus scanning. All the software is free (Open Source), only cost is the hardware which is about $800 and the labor to build the server and configure it properly which is about $500, then it basically goes in front of the mail server and accepts the email for the domain, if it passes the spam and virus checks its forwarded to the real mail server, if not its recorded in a database and deleted or quarantined. False positives are nonexistent when you set it up properly. With just 300 employees a company saves over $150,000 in employee utilization each year because of it freeing up not only the wasted time of sorting thru junk, but also the possible viral infections that can hit workstations as well.
You might let your IS guys know about www.mailscanner.info, awesome product, I swear by it, and its FREE!