The junk mail filter built into Outlook, while unpretentious, is pretty capable and often sufficient. It is not perfect, though, and a helping hand does not hurt its performance.

One way you can help Outlook achieve better spam filtering accuracy is by adding known senders to its list of Safe Senders. This makes sure mail from these senders always goes directly to your Outlook Inbox, no matter what the junk mail algorithm might think.

You can also whitelist complete domains using Safe Senders. After signing up for some About newsletters, I have added "D106" to the list, for example.

Add an Address or Domain to Safe Senders in Outlook

To add an address or domain to Safe Senders in Outlook:

• Select Actions | Junk E-mail | Junk E-mail Options... from the menu in Outlook.
• Go to the Safe Senders tab.
• Click Add....
• Type the email address or domain name you wan to whitelist.
  • To add a single address, type "heinz@example.com", for example.
  • To add a complete domain, type "example.com", for example.
  • To make sure sub-domains are not automatically whitelisted when you add a domain, include the '@' sign: "@example.com", for example. In this case, mail from "heinz@heinz.example.com" will not be whitelisted.
• Click OK.
• Click OK again.

If you already have a message from the sender you want to add to the Safe Senders list in your Outlook Inbox (or the Junk E-mail folder, of course), the procedure is even easier:

• Open a message from the sender (or a sender at the domain) you wan to add to Safe Senders.

• Select Actions | Junk E-mail and then Add Sender to Safe Senders List or Add Sender's Domain (@example.com) to Safe Senders List.