How to make emails not go to junk

An important part of training the algorithms email services use to detect junk messages is to check your junk/spam folder regularly and mark legitimate messages as not junk. We also recommend adding the junk/spam folder to your favorites to more easily check regularly. 

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:

1. Click on the Junk tool button in the toolbar near the top left of the Outlook window.
2. Click to select Junk E-Mail Options.
   At this point you may see a message box appear, with the message "The Junk E-mail filter is not available for your Microsoft exchange e-mail account because you are working online.  To enable the Junk E-mail filter, switch to Cached Exchange Mode."
   If this happens, ignore the instruction, click on OK and continue with step 3.
3. Click the topmost option, labelled No Automatic Filtering.
   (however, note that if you have specified any blocked senders, any messages from them will still go into the Junk E-Mail folder)
4. Click OK.

If you want to use the Outlook junk filter selectively, do the following:

1. Click to select the message from the address or domain you want to accept in future.
2. Click on the Junk tool button in the toolbar near the top left of the Outlook window.
3. To always accept messages from that single address, click on the Never Block Sender option.
   To always accept email from the sender's domain (for example, sussex.ac.uk) click the Never Block Sender's Domain option (but see the Note below).
4. Outlook should confirm the selection.  Click OK.

OUTLOOK WEB APP (OWA)

If you want to stop all junk filtering by OWA, do the following:

1. Click on the Options tool at the top right of the OWA page.
2. Click on See All Options...
3. Click on Block or Allow in the column on the left.
4. Click to select the Don't move e-mail to my Junk E-Mail folder option, which is at the top.
5. Click on Save at the bottom right.

If you want to use the OWA junk filter selectively, do the following:

1. Click on the Options tool at the top right of the OWA page.
2. Click on See All Options...
3. Click on Block or Allow in the column on the left.
4. Click the Automatically filter junk e-mail option.
5. Add addresses to the Safe Senders and Recipients list, or the Blocked Senders list, as required.
6. Click on Save at the bottom right.

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.

Let’s take a deeper dive into each of these filters and how the deliverability of emails is affected.

The Top Reason’s Emails Are Flagged as Spam

Elements of the Email.

If you find an email in your junk folder that shouldn’t be there it very well could be because the individual email triggered one of these common triggers:

• There are too many images in the email.
• The email uses SPAM trigger words (Amazing, cancel at any time, congratulations, guarantee, etc.).
• The email does not include a physical address.
• There are too many attachments in the email.

This level of filtering essentially determines if the contents of the email are wanted or unwanted.

The sender’s domain reputation

Every IP address is rated by each ISP, so if that IP address has been flagged for spam, fraudulent activity, or viruses, then any email from that domain will be flagged as well. 

Additionally, ISPs look at domain-level authentication to ensure that the email is actually being sent from who it says it’s being sent from. This level of review does not look at the content within the email.

Your engagement with the message

ISPs constantly learn from your actions — how you do and don’t interact with the emails you receive. Have you ever noticed that, if you immediately delete marketing emails from a company you are not interested in, you’ll stop seeing those emails after a while? Those emails haven’t disappeared into thin air, they’re still getting to you, but your ISP has learned that you don’t want them and placed them in your junk folder. 

Common triggers for this filter are:

• Clicking the spam button on a message in the inbox
• Opening or clicking on a message
• Enabling images
• Forwarding a message

What You Can Do to Improve Email Deliverability
The primary factors for email deliverability are based on the sender’s actions and ISP setup but there are a handful of things that you and your IT team can do to improve email deliverability within your organization.

If you use Outlook, here are a few tips to ensure future deliverability from senders that are currently flagged incorrectly.

• Click “not spam” on an email in the junk folder from a trusted source or move it to the inbox.
• Add the sender’s email address to your contacts. Emails from that sender should not be marked as spam in the future.
• Add trusted senders to the “Safe senders and domains” list to prevent Outlook from ever sending emails from them to your spam filter.
• Ask your IT department how you can view quarantined emails that have been sent to you.

Your IT Department should be able to ensure that your mailboxes are set up correctly. Different mailboxes serve different needs and should be customized to meet those needs.

To make sure you get each of your mailboxes set up correctly, here are a few questions to ask your IT team:

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