Description

Occasionally, a spam message can make it through the filters. There are various reasons this can happen. If it is a new spam campaign or variation, not an Allow rule, then you may want to submit the email to help the filtering system learn from the message and quarantine more consistently in the future.

Microsoft Outlook 2010 introduced Quick Steps as a feature that creates automation for everyday tasks. This article will show you how to create a Quick Step for submitting spam messages to the reporting address.

NOTE: Messages submitted to the review address will not send a confirmation, reply, or any indication that something was done with the message. The review address is an automated mailbox that does not send any information.

Applies to:

Outlook 2016, 2013, 2010

Configuration Steps

The configuration of the Quick Step action is done from Outlook. The Home ribbon menu should have some default Quick Steps already configured. This article assumes those Quick Steps are visible from the ribbon menu.

1. In the Quick Steps group, in the Quick Steps gallery, click the Create New Quick Step as shown in Figure 1.
   
   Fig. 1
   
2. The Edit Quick Step dialog box will open. Give the Quick Step a name, such as Report Spam.
3. From the Actions drop-down list, choose Forward message as an attachment and enter the To address as spam@emailservice.io.
   
   
4. Expand the Show Options section of the Quick Step and click the checkbox to enable Automatically send after a 1-minute delay. The completed dialog box should look similar to Figure 2. Click the Finish to add the Quick Step to the gallery.
   
   Fig. 2
   
   
   
5. The new Quick Step action will be placed in the gallery as shown in Figure 3.
   
   Fig. 3
   
   
   

Using the Quick Step Action

Using the Quick Step action is now very easy. The user will highlight the email they want to report as spam and click the "Report Spam" Quick Action from the gallery. No dialog box will open. Instead, the message will be created and placed into the Outbox folder of Outlook. After a 1 minute delay, the email will be sent with the offending spam attached so that the complete message, including header information, can be digested to help improve our filtering systems.

BEST PRACTICE: Submit one email per reported spam. The automated nature of the reporting mailbox will work best with a single email attached. If you received several similar spam messages in a short period, sending two to five examples is enough to help the filters improve.