Creating a Spam Filter Rule in Macintosh Entourage 2008

ITS has implemented a new way of marking spam messages. Potential spam or junk mail messages are flagged in the subject line of each message as POTENTIAL SPAM. This allows UCB e-mail users to filter spam and junk mail messages away from their inbox. For more information about ITS's effort against spam go to www.colorado.edu/its/email/spam.html

Creating a Spam Filter

You may first wish to create a folder to place your spam. To do so, open your Entourage e-mail program and follow these instructions: (Note: If you already have a Junk E-mail folder, skip down to the next section.)

1. Open Entourage 2008. Click on the folder you want to create a subfolder in. If you want your junk e-mail to be on the CULink server, click the Inbox folder under CULink in your mailbox list. If you want to create a folder on your local computer, click the Inbox folder under On My Computer in your mailbox list.

2. Click on the File drop-down menu.

3. Go to New and select Subfolder.

4. This will create a new folder in your account directory.

5. Change the name of this folder from untitled folder to an easy to recognize folder name, such as potential-spam.

The folder that has just been created will hold all of the spam that the ITS content anaylsis system filters. To create the spam filter, follow the instructions below.

To set up a filter:

1. Go to the Tools drop down menu and select Rules.

2. On the window that appears, click on the New button. A window like this will appear:

3. Change the Rule Name to Spam.

4. Click the Add Criterion button.

5. In the If section, click the first drop-down menu (default looks like Subject).

6. Choose Subject.

7. In the text field, type POTENTIAL SPAM.

8. In the Then section, click on the drop-down menu next to the Change status option. Choose Junk E-mail.

9. In the next drop-down menu (default set at Set category) and choose Move message.

10. In the next drop-down menu, click the Choose folder... option.

11. The Choose Folder window will pop-up. Click on the folder you want to have Entourage move the junk mail to, for example, Junk Mail or potential-spam.(Note: This saves the junk e-mail to your CULink account. Choose a folder on your personal computer if you wish to have it removed from the server, but still available until you have checked to verify whether it is spam or not.) Then, click Choose.

12. Click the OK button.

Entourage will now automatically move all mail that CU's mail filter thinks is spam into the folder called potential-spam and not into your Inbox. It is reccomended that you ocassionally peruse and trash the contents of the Spam folder to make sure there are no false positives (messages marked as spam, but are not) and to save disk space.

For more information about spam go to www.colorado.edu/its/email/spam.html