PARTE IV. DISCUSIÓN YCONCLUSIONES
ÁMBITO ACADÉMICO.
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pam. It wasn’t much loved when it was a questionable luncheon meat. Now it’s reviled the world over as a caustic nuisance that floods inboxes, monopo- lizes bandwidth, and creates needlessly long downloads. Outlook’s bulked-up junk mail filter drops spam into its own folder—a spam penalty box. The trick is to keep out spam while letting legitimate messages through.1. Click Actions➪Junk E-mail➪Junk E-mail Options to view the Junk E-mail Options dialog box. By default, the Low: radio button is active, which works reasonably well at shunting spam to the Junk E-mail folder in the Outlook Navigation pane.
2. To put the screws to spammers, ratchet up the filter by clicking the High: radio button in this dialog box. The more rigorous filtering catches more spam but may snare regular e-mail messages.
‘ 3. For maximum ruthlessness, click the check box named Permanently Delete Suspected Junk E-mail Instead of Moving It to the Junk E-mail folder. Now spam is sent directly to the Deleted Items folder for purging. Figure 17-1 shows this useful dialog box, which includes a clear explanation of the settings available to you.
Figure 17-1: Outlook’s default spam filtering is effective, but you may want to tighten the screws anyway.
4. What if legitimate e-mail is being flagged as spam? Click the legiti- mate message that has been sent to the Junk E-mail folder in the Outlook Navigation pane, and click the Not Junk button located on the Standard toolbar.
5. The Mark as Not Junk dialog box appears. Check the Always Trust E-mail From check box, and click OK. The message is returned to the Inbox and future messages from that source will not be flagged. 6. The Add to Trusted Lists dialog box is shown in Figure 17-2. Click
the check box to ensure that future e-mails from this source are allowed through. Click OK.
caution
Any filtering is likely to occa- sionally catch legitimate mes- sages. For this reason, make sure to frequently scan and clear your Junk E-mail folder to catch any “false-positives.” Unless you are extremely com- fortable with the filter, bypass- ing the Junk folder and deleting filtered messages outright is not recommended.
note
By default, Outlook blocks dis- play of images or media in HTML messages. This prevents spammers from registering the link that Outlook would other- wise make back to their Web server. If you receive a legiti- mate newsletter or other e-mail you want to have properly dis- played, simply click the gray status bar that appears at the top of the message window and click Download Pictures from the context menu.
caution
Restoring HTML display will make you more visible to spammers, since their e-mails often call back to their servers.
tip
A better idea might be to enable HTML on a per-message basis. All you have to do is click the gray message bar that Outlook places across the top of any message that has HTML blocked. From the fly-out menu, click Show Blocked Content. You can see the whole e-mail, without opening yourself to spammers. Figure 17-2:Outlook’s spam filter can snare some legitimate messages, particularly
e-mail newsletters. The Trusted List is a great way to filter spam without losing valuable e-mail.
7. To remove a sender from your Trusted List, click Actions➪Junk E-mail and click Junk E-mail Options from the fly-out menu. 8. In the dialog box that appears, click the Safe Senders tab, shown in
Figure 17-3, select the mistakenly approved source, and click the Remove button. You should activate the Also Trust E-mail from My Contacts check box to make sure that Outlook doesn’t filter e-mail from friends or coworkers. Click OK.
Figure 17-3:If you mistakenly gave a spammer entrée to your Inbox, don’t worry. That situation is easily corrected.
9. Finally, to restore graphics and media in HTML messages, click Tools➪Options, and then click the Security tab and click the Settings button.
10. In the External Content Settings dialog box uncheck the Block External Content box. Click OK twice to save the settings.
Taming Your Inbox with AutoArchive
D
espite all your best efforts, your Inbox defies domestication. You’ve got sub-folders, you’ve got rules, you’ve even banished all your junk mail—and still your Inbox is 1,200 messages deep and getting deeper. You can use Outlook’s handy AutoArchive feature to save aging entries to a backup PST file. That way they are available for reference without gumming up your Inbox.
1. Click Tools➪Options and click the Other tab in the Options dialog box. Outlook keeps a lot of its settings tucked away here, as shown in Figure 18-1.
Figure 18-1:Come back here to tweak Outlook layout elements like the Navigation pane buttons and location of the Reading pane on-screen.
2. Click the AutoArchive... button. Check the Run AutoArchive Every check box, and set the interval (in days) between backup sessions. The default is 14, but you can go longer if you find the operation intrusive. Also check the Prompt before AutoArchive Runs check box to be warned before a session (which can slow Outlook considerably) kicks off.
3. Make sure the Archive or Delete Old Items check box is checked. If you want your archive to be always visible in the Outlook Navigation pane, keep the Show Archive Folder in Folder List check box below it checked as well.
4. Set the age at which you want Outlook to retire items to archive in the Clean Out Items Older Than control. The default is 6 months, but you can set anything from 1 day to 99 months.
5. Click the Move Old Items To: radio button and change the file path and name beneath it if you wish. Outlook places this file by default into the folder alongside the main PST file, which is a good idea. You can use the Browse... button to navigate to a different subfolder.
caution
To keep everything, leave Delete Expired Items unchecked. Otherwise, Outlook will toss out specifically dated material like old meeting invita- tions. You may need those for record-keeping.
tip
I personally uncheck the Show Archive box, because I rarely need to go back. If you do hide the file, it’s easy to open in Outlook. Click File➪Open➪
My Outlook Data File and select the file name from the dialog box. Click OK, and the PST file will appear as another top-level item in the Navigation pane (just as it would if you left this check box active).
tip
I try to keep distinct yearly archives, just for organizational purposes. To do this, change the target archive file name once a year. Click inside the Move Old Items To: text box, and then drag the cursor right to scroll to the end of the text. Change the default archive.pst to a unique name like archive2003.pst. Around the middle of next year, change it again to archive2004.pst. From that point on, Outlook will funnel archived data to the newly assigned file name. You might want to create an annual reminder in Outlook’s calendar telling you to change the archive name.
caution
Archiving is a demanding task that will max out your CPU and slow system performance— especially if you have gobs of material to back up. It’s a good idea to start before lunch or during a coffee break.
cross-reference
If you want to create a redun- dant data store to protect against a corrupted file, you need to manually export folders from your active PST file. See Task 47.
Figure 18-2:Prepare Outlook to regularly shift aging e-mails and other items to another PST file.
7. After a short time, you should see a dialog box. Click No for now, so you can perform an archive manually.
8. To manually kick off an archive, click File➪Archive. In the Archive dialog box shown in Figure 18-3, click the top radio button to assert your settings on the upcoming operation. Click OK. Your data is being archived.
Figure 18-3:Don’t worry if everything is grayed out. This means Outlook is prepared to apply the standard Archive settings you just applied to all your folders.