Thursday, 03 January, 2002

Outlook Spam Filter

 I've finally gotten tired of all the junk email I get.  I'm still not going to suggest legislation, but I've gotten to the point where I don't want to manually delete all that crap.  So I turned on the junk email filter in Outlook and started adding spam senders to the junk senders list.  I did this at home a while back, and at work (where I keep getting porn site ads in Spanish for some reason) just the other day.

I've had to turn the junk filter off at work because the first two messages (the only two so far) that it flagged as suspected junk were legitimate messages—one from a client and one from a co-worker.  I thought I'd take a look at Outlook's filtering rules, but can't seem to do that.  What I really want is an option like Outlook Express's "Block Messages from Sender".  If the option is there in Outlook, it's hidden somewhere in that bewildering Options dialog.  Somebody at Microsoft needs to take a very close look at that program's user interface.

Actually, the UI isn't my only complaint with Outlook, and I'm looking to replace it on my home system.  Eudora looks like it might be worth another look—I used it briefly in 1997 but didn't like having to swap out the MAPI DLL every time I wanted to receive a fax.  I don't receive faxes anymore, so MAPI isn't an issue, and my understanding is that Eudora has fixed many of the other problems I had with it.