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SpamBayes Outlook Plugin

A spam filter based on statistical analysis of your personal mail.

If you are new to SpamBayes, see Welcome To Spambayes.
If you want to add the Spam field to your Outlook views, follow these instructions.
If you need help configuring SpamBayes, see our Configuration Guide.
If you are having problems with SpamBayes, please see the Troubleshooting Guide.

Other links of interest

The main SpamBayes project page.
The online SpamBayes FAQ.
How to make a donation.

Tips and Common Problems

Filtering in the background: When Outlook is under load, SpamBayes may occasionally miss some messages (as Outlook doesn't tell us they appeared), and if you use builtin Outlook rules, you may find that occasionally they also fail to filter messages (as both SpamBayes and Outlook "fight" over processing the message).  To overcome these problems, SpamBayes defaults to filtering new messages in the background.  The enabling or disabling of this feature, and the delay before processing new mails can be configured via the SpamBayes Manager's Advanced tab.

Toolbars stop working: Many people report that occasionally the toolbars will stop working.  See the troubleshooting guide for more details on how to fix this.

Toolbars remain after uninstall: If you uninstall SpamBayes, the toolbar items will remain when you next start Outlook.  You can delete the toolbar by right-clicking on it, then selecting Customize.  Our troubleshooting guide has alot more information on toolbars.

Late Breaking Problems: For problems reported since this version of SpamBayes was released, see the online frequently reported bugs list.

Viewing and Using the Spam Score Field

A custom property named Spam is added to all Outlook messages scored, but Outlook does not allow us to automatically add this to your views.  However, you can teach Outlook to display this field as a column in any table view, like the standard Messages view.

This takes some work, and has to be done again for every folder in which you want to display a Spam column - typically this will be all folders you are filtering, and your Spam and Unsure folders.  Perform the following steps

  • While looking at an Outlook table view (like Messages), right-click on the line with column headers (From, Subject, To, Received, ...). In the context menu that pops up, click on Field Chooser. A box with title Field Chooser pops up.
  • In the drop-down list at the top of the Field Chooser window, select User Defined Fields
  • Below the drop-down, you should see a rectangular button with a Spam label . This should be automatically created for all folders managed by the system, but if it does not appear, you will need to add it yourself.  To do this, perform the following steps
    • In the lower left corner of the Field Chooser box, click New.... A box with title New Field pops up.
    • In the Name: box, type Spam.
    • In the Type: dropdown list, select Percent. This is the third choice in the dropdown list. Do not select any other format -- it won't work.
    • The Format: select the first entry in the list - "Rounded".  The Field Chooser should now look like the first image on the right.
    • Click OK in the New Field box. Now you're back in the Field Chooser box, with a new Spam button shown, as the second figure shows.
  • Use your mouse to drag the Spam button to the column header position where you want to see the Spam column. You don't have to be precise here -- you can rearrange or resize the column later just by dragging it around.
  • You're done! Close the Field Chooser box.
Creating the new field


The Field Chooser after creating the field.
Outlook's standard Automatic Formatting features can also be taught how to access the value of this field; for example, you could tell Outlook to display rows with suspected spam messages in green italic. However, for whatever reason, the Outlook Rules Wizard does not allow creating rules based on user-defined fields. That's why this addin supplies its own filtering rules.

Installing for all users on a machine

By default, SpamBayes will install itself only for the user who actually installed it.  If other users log onto the same machine, their Outlook installation will not have SpamBayes available.  Even though this is the way SpamBayes is designed, our troubleshooting guide has details on how you can change this.

Your help is needed!

This is free software.  Please offer any help you are able to.  In particular, contributions to this documentation are welcome!  If you don't know where to start, please send a mail, indicating any skills you may have we could use.