Rules Wizard doesn't filter out spam words in HTML messages

[John Smith]

This is my best guess really. Some words which are in my rule to move spam
to another folder just seem to ignore some messages with exactly (I checked
spelling) the words I am using to filter. The only common theme to these
pesky messages is that they *look* like plain text messages, but they are
really HTML ones (right-click|view source) and Rules seems to fail. Anyone
know how to get past this annoyance? At 75 spams a day in one account I
cannot get rid of, I'd really like my filters to work. Thanx in advance!

 

[Jim Haselmaier]

(I'm new to this group. If you're familiar with this I apologize.....)

Have you heard of or looked at POPFile? Its an e-mail classification
program that sits between Outlook and your POP server. (If you're running
on Exchange I don't believe POPFile is as clean a solution. In that
scenario you might need another plug-in called Outclass, which uses POPFile.
SpamBayes I think is another, similar piece of software. It uses the same
theories as POPFile, but its a totally different program.)

POPFile classifies each e-mail into whatever class you set up. It is often
used for spam, but it can be used to classify e-mail in any number of ways.
It then inserts a header into the message header, which you can then use
Outlook rules to look for. I've found the "sophisticated" parts of Outlook
rules extremely frustrating. So I leave the hard classification decisions
to POPFile. Then use relatively simple handling rules in Outlook to put the
messages in the appropriate folders.

I'm not associated with the makers of POPFile, other than an exceptionally
satisfied user who believes this is one of the greatest pieces of software
he has seen in many years. And, ITS FREE! A great example of what Open
Source can do.

Check out http://www.sourceforge.net/

Jim Haselmaier
(e-mail address removed)

In any event,

 

[X-Eliminator]

You didn't say which version of Outlook you are using.

I solved most of this problem by using the NoHTML dll in Outlook XP.
Since the entire email is rendered to text, the filter rules will then
catch the words & phrases that you configured in your rules. If you
are using Outlook 2000 before SP3, the using the NoHTML dll will NOT
work because the email will be rendered blank and still remain in your
outbox:

Check here:

http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/antivirus.htm

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=nohtml+outlook&fr=fp-top&n=20&fl=0&x=wrt

You might also want to try iHateSpam. I still haven't killed-off all
of the HTML spams, but I'm down by more than 50% since I started using
noHTML last week.

==============================================================

 

[John Smith]

bah, I thanked the wrong person before, /blush

thanks Jim

 

[John Smith]

Popfile is VERY impressive, btw, thank you again.

http://sourceforge.net