Sometimes, seemingly for no apparent reason, Outlook or Outlook Web App (OWA) will put genuine email into your Junk E-Mail folder. Usually some feature of the message will have caused it to be treated as junk. This can even happen to email from colleagues within the university. As a result, people are often led to believe they haven't even received the message, until they discover it later in the Junk E-Mail folder. Recipients may even notice the newly-delivered message appear in their Inbox, only for it to vanish a moment later.
Outlook uses a built-in, fixed set of filtering rules to scan emails in order to identify likely spam. The filtering rules are controlled by regular updates from Microsoft, and unfortunately they cannot be changed or disabled by IT Services. As the behaviour is not universal, it's likely that other features of some emails tip them over a 'junk threshold' and cause them to be put into the Junk E-Mail folder.
Email from a given address, or from an entire mail domain (usually an organisation such as sussex.ac.uk), or indeed all your incoming mail can be protected from being 'junked', as follows.
The method varies slightly, according to your version of Outlook. Note also that if you use Outlook Web App (OWA) in addition to standard Outlook, you will need to apply the method to both applications as described below.
OUTLOOK 2013 and 2010
If you want to stop all junk filtering by Outlook, do the following:
If you want to use the Outlook junk filter selectively, do the following:
OUTLOOK WEB APP (OWA)
If you want to stop all junk filtering by OWA, do the following:
If you want to use the OWA junk filter selectively, do the following:
It would still be wise to check your Junk E-Mail folder from time to time "just in case", or if an expected email doesn't seem to have arrived.
NOTE: We recommend you do not use the Never Block Sender's Domain feature for email from large service provider domains, such as hotmail.com. This is because they cannot be treated as email from a single organisation. It is far better to set Outlook to 'trust' email from individual, trusted email addresses from such large domains.
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This is question number 2455, which appears in the following categories: