Outlook 2007 - more bugs and Junk Mail filter failure
Posted by shannonclark on May 14, 2007
Tonight (well technically this morning) I downloaded a bunch of mail to my installation of Outlook 2007, a bit surprised that in doing so I was told it was catching junk mail (since I am pulling down from gmail where there are already pretty good junk/spam mail filters). In the past I have been reasonably impressed with Microsoft Outlook’s Junk Mail filters.
Not so anymore.
In looking at my junk mail folder - which at the time I looked had nearly 4000 messages (not as surprising as it may sound, I get nearly 400-500 emails every day) so this was from not much more than a month or two of mail - at first glance over 90% of the messages in the “Junk Mail” folder for Outlook 2007 were NOT junk mail.
These messages included mail I had sent myself (from my gmail account). Personal messages to me from my mother. A wide range of direct and indirect messages - many from mailing lists for which I have rules set up.
But 90% of the messages not actually being Junk Mail is totally and completely unacceptable.
Further, there is not way, at least not that I can determine, to once you have marked one instance of a message (say to a mailing list) as not being junk mail to automatically go through the junk mail folder and correct the processing of all of the messages of that type (indeed if you select more than one message from the junk mail folder you no longer have the option of marking them as not junk). Yes, when you mark a message as “not junk” you then get asked whether you want to add the sender to your list of “safe senders” and the recipient to your “safe recipients” list. But doing so does not let you get a chance to do so for all such messages in the folder.
Thus if, like me, you have 4000 messages in the folder there is no way for you to go through the messages and clean them up other than pretty much go through them one message at a time marking the false positives as “not junk” (and dealing in each case with the automatically generated pop-up window asking you to add that sender - even when that sender is already on your safe senders list!)
Unbelievably bad. And this was at the “LOW” setting.
I can only imagine that should I have set the “junk mail” filter any higher, I would have had 10,000+ messages in my junk mail folder.
And woe befall you if you have set your junk mail to be automatically deleted!
No wonder email is growing less reliable - the newest version of Outlook seems to feel that people should not get their messages at all.
And a performance set of issues.
I gave up on setting the rules (I’m also going to just turn off junk mail filters) and decided to just move all the messages to my inbox.
Then I tried to open up my inbox.
And I waited. And waited. And waited. Apparently about 8000 messages is too many for Outlook to handle gracefully, it has to calculate all types of things (I guess) and so I waited to open up my own inbox for a number of minutes.
My experience with Outlook 2007 so far has not be a positive one. Indeed I am so unimpressed I find myself rarely trying to use it, though I would like it to be workable. Indeed I hoped it would be workable.
I fear it is not.
June 15, 2007 at 9:49 am
Hi Shannon,
Wondering if you’re experiencing a problem that I am having with Outlook 2007. When I’m reviewing new messages in my Inbox, occasionally a message I encounter will instantly get moved to the Junk folder right when I click on it. Or what I think is actually happening is I’ll delete a particular message, and as the program precedes to the next message, it instantly moves that message to the Junk folder. I then have to go the Junk folder and move it back to the Inbox each time. Can’t find anything on the net or in the Microsoft support database about it. Frustrating.
Thanks,
Mark
September 12, 2007 at 12:43 pm
Hi Shannon,
I too get a ton of emails every day, and lots of them get transmitted to my BlackBerry which unfortunately exceeds my data plan every month, hence $$.
I have tried setting a bunch of rules in Outlook 2007, but it seems to run out of room and won’t let me create more than abou 20 rules.
Is there a way to configure either Outlook or Exchange 2003 to increase the number of rules? Or is there software out there than can do the same thing?
May 21, 2008 at 7:31 am
Hi Shannon,
Found your blog through google!
I am having the same problem. I had set one “automated” message to go into Junk Mail. Now Outlook thinks anyone else is received that message is also a junk mail sender. So now, my boss’s email and a number of other people I work with - go into Junk Mail. Anyone who gets mail from any of those people, Outlook has associated with Junk Mail. I even have the Junk Mail sensitivity turned off, and still, everything goes into Junk Mail. Not to mention, all of these people are already on my Safe Senders list.
I was looking around to see if I could find any solutions, maybe a back-end file that has to be edited or deleted. I will come back here & let you know if I find anything.
-Shannon