Safe-Sender-List
Despite having Microsoft's top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art filtering system, we frequently encounter what they call a false positive, which is when the filter rejects a legitimate email as if it was spam. This doesn't have to happen.
Outlook for Windows and Outlook Web App (OWA) offer some very important junk mail settings which you control. The biggest key to successfully avoiding false positives (where legitimate email is rejected) is the safe sender list. Your safe sender list from Outlook is replicated to the servers, where the decision is made to accept or reject incoming mail. To be clear, these are not just local settings, they affect what happens server-side.
Without the safe sender list, even a message from your best friend or biggest customer has to earn its way past the filter by not being too junky. Messages from senders on your safe list, on the other hand, will never be rejected or treated as junk.
So how do you populate this list? Fortunately you don't have to type everyone's address into the list. By simply checking a box, you can make the system trust email from your contacts. Unfortunately, this box is not checked by default. You need to go into your junk mail settings and check the box to enable this important feature. This check box is available in OWA and in Outlook 2010 and 2007 for Windows, it's not in Outlook 2011 for Mac so use OWA to enable the option if you're a Mac user. Once this is enabled, all you need to do is be certain your friends and clients are included in your contacts folder.
But wait, there's more… Outlook 2007 and 2010 for Windows also have an automatic learning feature. This is really slick, but amazingly (stupidly), this is also turned off by default. If you turn this on, Outlook will automatically add to your safe list, the people you send outbound email to. So even if they're not in your contacts, they will be on your safe list if you've ever sent them an email. This feature is not available in OWA or in Outlook 2011 for Mac.
Detailed steps and a screen shot are included at the end of this article. Now, what can we do server side? We have the content filter turned on — enabled — by default for all users/addresses. The filter has an exception list, we can manually add recipient addresses to exempt them from content filtering. If you are particularly concerned about incoming email being rejected and if critical email might come from an address that's not in your contacts, an address you've never sent a message to, then you might want us to add one of your addresses to the exception list, exempting that address from content filtering.
If you enable the learning and trust your contacts, this is only rarely necessary. The downside of course, is your junk mail folder will fill up with a lot of junk. You'll need to empty it — right click the junk folder and choose empty folder from the context menu. Some of that junk will find its way into your inbox as well. So this is not something we recommend for everyone, it's a serious step you should only take if the other steps outlined above are not enough.
Keep in mind, email rejected by the content filter is not simply dropped. It is returned to sender. If the sender is a real person, they will see that their message to you didn't go through and was returned to them.
Please take these simple steps, for everyone in your group, to enable these junk mail options, to fully utilize the powerful junk mail filtering system at your command.
In Outlook 2010, from the Home tab's toolbar choose Junk, then Junk E-mail Options. On the first tab, Options, choose Low. (Choosing no automatic filtering will disable the safe list feature so don't do that). On the second tab, Safe Senders, enable both check boxes, "Also trust e-mail from my Contacts" and "Automatically add people I e-mail to the Safe Senders List." (See screen shot.)
If you don't use Outlook 2010 or 2007, login to OWA, click the Options button in the upper right hand corner, then choose See All Options. Choose Block or Allow from the list of links at the left hand side. Choose "Automatically filter junk e-mail" and enable the box "Trust e-mail from my contacts." Click Save in the lower right hand corner. (No screen shot.)
Outlook screen shot: