Why does Entourage keep automatically putting email messages into my Junk Mail folder?

November 22, 2006 3:54 AM

Why does Entourage keep automatically putting email messages into my Junk Mail folder?

After having the "Junk E-Mail" protection start to call a lot of legitimate email (i.e. anything with an aol.com addy, for starters) junk email and autofile it into the Junk Mail folder, I finally just turned "Junk E-mail Protection" to OFF. And yet, Entourage still behaves as it is ON...it STILL automatically moves legit emails to the Junk folder when I receive email.

What gives? This is driving me crazy

posted by thewiseacre to computers & internet (8 comments total)

Obvious question: did you verify that you don't have some weird mail rule under Tools / Rules ? I know that the folks I work with often forget they asked me to do something a year ago that all of the sudden seems like madness to them now.

("Yes, you asked me to set up this mail rule to delete email with 'thank you' in the subject line about 18 months ago." < --real life example)br>
You could have inadvertently also added those domains to Entourage's Junk category, which even disabling the junk filter may not bypass.

Here are the suggestions listed in Entourage's Help for when too many messages are classified as junk:

• Add message senders to the Address Book. Junk E-mail Protection never assigns messages from contacts in your Address Book to the Junk category.

• Specify domains that you wish to exempt from Junk E-mail Protection. When you enable Junk E-mail Protection, you can list domains that you trust. For example, if you type "microsoft.com," a message from a person with an e-mail address that contains "microsoft.com" is never classified as junk.

• Use the Mailing List Manager to manage messages from a mailing list. Messages that are handled by a mailing list rule are never classified as junk.

Good luck. :)
posted by smallerdemon at 7:12 AM on November 22, 2006

I had this happen to me too, and I never figured it out. I ended up switching to Apple's Mail. In my case, I always suspected that there was spam filtering going on at the Exchange server level. I don't know what your mail server situation is, but as far as I could tell it wasn't the client doing the filtering. That said, the IT department insisted that there wasn't any server side filtering, so it never got resolved.

The other thing I noticed (maybe this helps?) is that it tended to be very bursty. That is to say, it would dump lots of messages into the spam folder for the course of a day and then stop again. These messages were often direct response to emails I'd sent, which made it a particularly weird behavior.

Good luck. Wish I could be more helpful...
posted by heresiarch at 7:39 AM on November 22, 2006

Hm. I didn't think to ask what type of mail setup this is.

Exchange, IMAP, or POP?

The other thing that might be happening is nothing to do with Rules or Spam filter but Mailing List Manger.

Go to Tools / Mailing List Manager and make sure there's no entries in there (unless, of course, you have some that are in place for specific reasons - in that case, verify that the ones you have are not set up to dump emails from specific domains into junk).

I would definitely verify you didn't set up any mail rules to auto-delete or move things to Junk by going to Tools / Rules. Make sure you check all of the settings there (POP and IMAP) since, again, I'm not sure what protocol you're dealing with.

If your email is IMAP, then your server might be the thing that's sorting the junk email or classifying email as junk and then Entourage is just paying attention to that junk header.

If you add those email addresses to your address book, Entourage should ignore them as ever again being marked as junk.
posted by smallerdemon at 10:02 AM on November 22, 2006

If you add those email addresses to your address book, Entourage should ignore them as ever again being marked as junk.

I'd like to add I have this problem as well and Entourage consistently puts some addresses that are in my address book in the Junk Mail folder (including any e-mail from my mother!). This problem drives me crazy, too. Junk Mail filter is 'off', I don't have any rules sending things to the Junk Mail folder, and I'm using a POP account. Like the original questioner I'm mystified. I'm thinking it's a bug as Entourage for Mac is one hell of a buggy program.

I'd dump Entourage but I can't find another e-mail client for Mac that has the built-in database capabilities that I require (such as the ability to assign contacts in multiple categories, etc). Sigh.
posted by General Zubon at 12:12 PM on November 22, 2006

I'm thinking it's a bug as Entourage for Mac is one hell of a buggy program.

Ah ha. What version of Entourage are you using? Perhaps you need to apply a service pack.

If you have Entourage 2004, I would recommend upgrading to the latest service pack (11.2.5).

I use Entourage for four separate email accounts with POP and I've got ten years worth of email in there. I have not experienced the problem you are having, which is why I am curious about the version. And I've been using it since it was introduced in Office 2001 for Classic. :)

I also can't recommend highly enough The Entourage Help Page for sussing out little mysteries like this.
posted by smallerdemon at 12:45 PM on November 22, 2006

I am, and have been, using 11.2.5.
I've poured over the help pages.
Thanks though.

In thinking more about it, the contacts that repeatedly get put in the Junk Mail folder are ones I have categorized as "Friend" (yes, I have my mom categorized as a 'friend' ... awww). Once again, there are no rules designating putting anything in the Junk Mail folder as well as nothing dealing with the 'Friend' category. Mail List Manager has nothing either. I'm guessing a possible solution is to do away with that category all together which just seems silly.

I'm still thinking it's a bug. I've run across so many bugs in this program. Anyway, I would love it if someone could indeed prove me wrong ...
posted by General Zubon at 1:13 PM on November 22, 2006

well, I had a bunch of rules turned on (for example: anything with an aol.com address is labeled "not junk", something the app ignored) and have shut them off. all rules are shut off. junk mail filter is shut off. everything seems to be going directly into the Inbox. Today it is, anyway.

I too had bursting issues, where some days Entourage would dump everything into the Junk Mail folder and other days where it wouldn't. I'm hoping that it was my Rules that was causing the problems, although I'm not confident that it was.
posted by thewiseacre at 1:51 PM on November 22, 2006

I just made a rule that anything in the 'friend' category is not junk mail. I guess this is an obvious solution but it wouldn't have occurred to me if this thread didn't get me thinking. Anyway, let's see if it works ...
posted by General Zubon at 2:33 PM on November 22, 2006