How to set up a rule in Outlook to take advantage of spam filtering

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Issue:

Our mail servers include a spam filter that attempts to determine whether an incoming message is a spam message or a legitimate email.  The filter assigns a score to each message representing the probability that it is spam.  

If the score is high enough, the server deletes the message automatically and it never reaches your inbox.  If there is a high probably that the message is spam, but not high enough to trigger automatic deletion, it will add the word "***SPAM***" to the subject an pass it along for your review.  These thresholds are set by the system administrators.

This article describes how to set up a filter in Outlook to automatically move these messages tagged as probable spam to a separate folder so you can easily review and delete them.

Solution:

In Outlook, click Tools|Rules Wizard.

In the Rules Wizard dialog, click New.

Click Next (In Outlook XP, select Start creating a rule from a template and Move messages based on content).

Check "with specific words in subject" (In Outlook XP this should already be checked).  Click on the underlined value that reads "specific words". Type "***SPAM***" (without quotes) and click the Add button then click the OK button.

Click Next.

Check "move it to the specified folder" (In Outlook XP this should already be checked). Click on the underlined value that reads "specified". This will bring up the Rules Wizard folder selection
window.

Select "Inbox" (In Outlook XP click Personal Folders first) then Click the New button to create a new folder and name it something like Spam. Click the OK button, then on the OK button again.

Click the Finish button and then the OK button.

Now, incoming messages marked as spam will automatically go into the Spam folder. You may want to check through it periodically just in case you have any false positives.

More Information:

Note: Different versions of Outlook will have slightly different settings.

WARNING:  If you choose to setup a rule to automatically delete messages that have "***SPAM***" in the subject line, there is a risk that you will occassionally delete a legitimate email.  Because these messages do not rise to the level of "guaranteed SPAM," we recommend moving these emails to a special folder so that you can periodically go through them to make sure no legitimate emails get caught.

Additional spam related articles:
Spam Filter Scoring Methodology
How does SAGE Prevent Incoming SPAM on SAGE Email Accounts
Unsolicited Email (a.k.a. SPAM)
Best Practices for Preventing SPAM

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