Every day, hackers use millions of zombie computers located around the world to launch massive spam attacks. As you can see, having a reliable junk email filter is extremely important. If you’re using Outlook, you can breathe a sigh of relief. Microsoft’s email client will always nip spam attacks in the bud, preventing unwanted emails from landing in your inbox.
Outlook is doing such a great job at blocking junk emails that it often flags regular emails as spam. That’s why many users are looking for a way to disable Outlook’s built-in junk email filter.
How Do I Turn off Spam Filters in Outlook?
Edit Your Spam Filters
If Outlook sends regular emails to the Junk folder, this is because your spam filters are way too aggressive. You can either lower the protection level or disable the filters completely.
- Launch Outlook, click on the Home Menu, and select Junk.
- Click on Junk E-mail Options and select the level of protection you want to use.
- Select No Automatic Filtering if you want to disable the automatic Junk Email Filter. If you select this option, you also need to remove names from the Junk Email Filter lists.
- Select Low if you want Outlook to flag only the emails that are obvious junk messages.
- High or Safe Lists Only are two really restrictive filtering options that you should use only if you’re dealing with many spam messages.
⇒ Important Note: The option to disable junk email filtering is not available on Outlook.com. You need to use the desktop app to tweak your settings.
Junk Email Filters for Outlook.com Users
Unfortunately, changing the junk email filter level is not that simple for Internet-based users. You can go to Settings, select Email, click on Junk email, block or whitelist senders and domains, or create safe mailing lists.
If you scroll down all the way to the bottom of the page, you’ll there are only two filters available:
- Only trust emails from addresses in my Safe Senders and domains lists and Safe mailing lists.
- Bl0ck attachments, pictures, and links from anyone not in my Safe senders and domains list.
As you can see, there is no option to turn off junk email filtering.
Outlook’s Perfectly Imperfect Junk Filters
Unfortunately, many users reported that changing the junk email settings on the desktop app doesn’t affect the spam filtering level on Outlook.com. In other words, even if you set the filter to “No automatic filtering,” some emails will still land in the junk folder.
The worst part is that even if you manually mark emails as “Not junk,” the web app continues to send future messages from the same senders to the Junk folder.
As a result, many users complained that Microsoft is forcing its spam filters on them by not allowing users to disable the junk filters on Outlook.com. Some users decided to switch to a different email client for this reason alone.
Conclusion
The Outlook desktop app offers more junk email filtering options compared to the web app. The most important difference is that only the desktop app allows you to disable the built-in spam filters. It seems that Outlook.com users have no choice but to accept the junk email filters that Microsoft is forcing on them.
Are you happy with Outlook’s junk email filters? Do you often miss important emails because the mail client is flagging normal emails as spam messages? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Robert woodward says
I thought I had disabled the junk filter but outlook still put important emails in junk.
No alternative but move to another email provider.