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.
Mark Johnson said
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
Miles Gibson said
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?
Shannon Davis said
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
Andrew said
I advise blowing away your present install of Outlook and reinstalling.
Andrew
Wesley B said
I too found this discussion via a Google search.
Ever since mid October all mail from Gmail.com addresses are going to my Junk Folder. I specifically added some of those addresses to the Safe Senders List and made sure there was nothing in my Blocked Senders List that would suggest them being Junk mail. after all that, they are still judged to be Junk/SPAM.
I have uninstalled an dreinstalled Outlook. I have tried disabing other security programs and SPAM blockers. nothing seems to work!
I have been researching this problem on many forums and it is quite common now and still, no one has a solution. The Microsoft and Outlook forums do not have any mention of this and my direct inquires to Microsoft Tech support and Gmail have gone unanswered.
If anyone does find nan actual solution ot this problem, PLEASE post it!
Jason Ayala said
Okay so I am trying to get into the habit of ending these threads I find when I research a problem with the solution I find and what ultimately works.
I ran across this page using a different search string.
http://blogs.msdn.com/outlook/archive/2007/07/12/keeping-your-junk-e-mail-filter-updated.aspx
I found it useful and it seemed to resolve my issues.
Jason Ayala
shannonclark said
Jason,
You missed my point – it is not updating the rules (I have automatic updates set) but rather that Outlook 2007 just utterly fails to work on people, like me, with very high volumes of mail.
Plus false positives (real mail marked at junk) are a truly serious problem. Gmail too suffers from some – this is a likely failure point for nearly all junk mail filters (probably all in fact) but it also needs to be improved and fixed.
Shannon
Michael Washington said
This site:
http://blogs.msdn.com/outlook/archive/2007/07/12/keeping-your-junk-e-mail-filter-updated.aspx
says:
if the messages in the Junk Email folder have the subject marked with a stamp such as “[SPAM]“, then a non-Outlook filtering is running on the inbox. This is because Outlook does not stamp messages identified as junk with any sort of label.
I went into my AVG virus control center and turned off it’s anti-spam
Lars Simonsen said
Yes, Outlook 2007 falls flat. In my case, the junk mail filter only takes 50 % of the junk mail, while taking 5 % of the non-junk mail. It completely ignores my attempts at configuration. Horrendously microsoftish. Sorry, I meant horrendously bad.
Sheriff said
Thanks Michael Washington!
Like many others, good messages were ending up in the Outlook 2007 “Junk” folder – often while I was reading them in the ‘Reading Pane.’ I wanted to turn off junk mail filtering, but had to settle for the “No Automatic…” setting. Still, good mail got filtered.
I had been reading through that same Alessio Roic blog, but didn’t make it down to the March 28, 2008 comment about 3rd party filters using the Outlook junk mail folder. I too have now turned OFF my AVG spam filter. Hope that works.
Thanks again Michael!
Bob said
I find the best mail viewer is the free, fast, Mozilla Thunderbird. It may miss advanced features such as calendar, but this can easily be added with free easily available plugins like “lightning”. Microsofts software is often the slowest and most bloated.
Peter French said
One problem with Thunderbird is that although you can transfer all of your mail and addresses books across, if you need to revert to Outlook you can’t transfer anything back.
Luc said
It’s getting worse instead of better.
Most of the mail I receive are automatically generated status messages from systems I administer all over the country. For a mail filter, these look like mailing lists (my address is in BCC), so I always expected some false positives – but it’s always been better than I expected.
But after receiving the March 2009 updates through windows update, the number of false positives I get in Outlook 2007 jumped up from that acceptable level (less than 1%) to about half of all the mail I receive. Just like that.
Messages that were routed to a folder other than my inbox by a filter, with “stop processing more rules” explicitly set, are now suddenly routed to my junk mail filter instead. For those categories (filters) that are affected, 100% of their mails are suddenly considered spam.
Another thing I noticed is that it now seems to regard each and every mail that has the word “cash” in the subject line as spam, even if the mail was sent locally by someone else using the same Exchange server. Ridiculous: don’t they realize that there are people doing business who might use that word legitimately?
Stephan said
I HAVE OFFICE 2007 AND I UPDATED IT WUFF OFFICE SP1.
MINE WAS FIXED AFTER THAT.
SALUUT
Stephan said
O YA. I DID ALOTA OTHER OFFICE UPDATES ALSO
John said
We are having messages from addresses on the Safe Sender’s list moved in to the Junk Mail folder. I am unable to find a resolution to this on the web. Does anyone have a solution?
Sharon Kahn said
Just to mention… exactly the same problem as Shannon describes–and I too have a lot of emails in my folders, and have tried to reinstall, even to a newly formatted computuer. Weirdly, the program will suddenly migrate hundreds of already-read emails from my inbox…sometimes old ones, sometimes new. I just received a tip from another site to try adding a new profile to see if the behavior continues. Will let you know if that works. But this seems to be a prevalent problem. May just have to abandon use of Outlook. Way too much hassle.
Mario said
I had the same problem in my Outlook 2007. Everything that I did to mark the email as safe sender, not junkmail and etcetera, did not work, it all went to Junkmail. After evaluating the issue, it appears that an update by my AVG antivirus was marking the email as spam and somehow overwritting my Outlook 2007 Junkmail settings. After adjusting the mail settings through my AVG spam filter everything works fine.
Jason said
Saying you found this site via a Google search is like pulling into a friends driveway and telling him you got there via the road