How to stop emails going to junk mac

Q: Why are my emails going to junk Mac?

Turn Mails junk mail filter on or off. If your email account filters junk mail on the mail server, messages might be moved to the Junk mailbox even when this option isnt selected.

Outlook 2016 for Mac Office for business Office 365 Small Business More...Less

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Block a sender
Unblock a sender on non-Exchange based accounts
Unblock a sender on Exchange based accounts
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How do I stop certain emails from going to my Junk Mail?
Why are my emails going to junk Mac?
How do I stop emails from going to junk in Outlook for Mac?

If you want to stop receiving email from someone, you can add his or her email address to your blocked senders list. Outlook automatically moves any new mail that you receive from this person to the Junk email folder. When you want to receive mail from this person again, you can remove his or her email address or domain from your blocked senders list.

Block a sender

In the message list, select a message from the sender whom you want to block.
In the Outlook menu bar select Message > Junk Mail > Block Sender.
Outlook adds the sender's email address to the blocked senders list.
Note: You can restore any of the mail that is in the Junk email folder. Click the message that you want to move to the Inbox folder, and then on the Home tab, click Junk, and then click Not Junk.

Unblock a sender on non-Exchange based accounts

In the Outlook menu bar select Tools >Junk Email Preferences.
Note: If Junk Email Preferences is grayed out your account may be hosted by Exchange. See Unblock a sender on Exchange based accounts below
On the Blocked Senders tab, select the email address or domain you want to unblock, and choose Remove the selected sender button
.

Unblock a sender on Exchange based accounts

Exchange accounts, like Outlook.com or your work email account hosted by Exchange, do not have access to the Junk Mail Preferences. For those accounts junk mail filtering is handled on the Exchange server and is not a client option. To remove a blocked sender, see Block or allow (junk email settings).

Spam remains a problem decades after its unfortunate debut on the internet. Spam, loosely defined, is any message you don’t want to receive of a commercial or misleading nature. Millions of person-hours have been spent to try to identify automatically and correctly unsolicited commercial email (UCE), phishing email, and other malicious or offensive messages. No one has fully succeeded.

Apple’s iCloud mail hosting and Mail apps for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS try to provide an interconnected set of tools to block or mark spam. Apple employs many techniques to identify and block messages that we never see. A ne’er-do-well sending a billion identical emails to iCloud users will likely see all billion blocked.

As a Mail user on any Apple operating system—including via icloud.com—you are likely aware that you can mark items as junk or non-junk (“ham” in the ham/spam pairing) to move messages between those mailboxes. Marking messages in either direction adds training information that should decrease false positives (messages that are incorrectly marked as ham or spam) and false negatives (spam that’s missed).

In Mail for macOS, you can select a message or messages in any folder except Junk and choose Message > Move to Junk or click the junk icon, a little bin with an “x” in it. In the Junk folder, you can select one or more emails and choose Messages > Move to Inbox or click the toolbar icon that looks in this context like a little bin with an upward-pointing arrow in it.

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Move to Junk in iOS 13’s Maill app.

In iOS and iPadOS, you tap the leftward-pointing arrow beneath a message located anywhere but in the Junk mailbox and swipe up to tap Move to Junk to tag and move it. In the Junk mailbox, tap the arrow icon and swipe up to tap Mark as Not Junk.

But all the movement and marking happens only within Apple’s mail system. If you use the Mail app for email managed by any other ISP or other company, the ham/spam marking typically doesn’t improve results: moving items between folders doesn’t signal a change in state. This is a problem if you consistently have bad matching. One reader noted receiving a message from Comcast stating comcast.net mail might be inaccurately filtering messages as spam coming from businesses and schools because of the sudden increased volumes during the pandemic. Comcast explained changes it’s making to improve on this.

My Mac 911 correspondent said, however, they couldn’t find any way at Comcast to fix bad spam tagging. I suggest checking with Comcast or any ISP to find their webmail interface. ISPs almost always offer one, and provide tools for viewing and managing junk there, sometimes including handling quarantined messages that aren’t even put into your junk folder. You may also be able to adjust settings.

I’ve used Fastmail for many years, and they expose some controls for the spam-filtering software they use. This has let me tweak the “score” at which I want something marked as spam and at which I want a message deleted without ever reading. While it’s not perfect, only a few percent of spam get through and only a few messages a day at most are dropped into junk instead of my inbox.

This Mac 911 article is in response to a question submitted by Macworld reader Bill.

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How do I stop certain emails from going to my Junk Mail?

Mail goes to the Junk folder by mistake.

Open your Junk Email folder and select the messages you want to keep..

From the top toolbar, select Not junk > Not junk (or Not spam > Not spam). ... .

If you've blocked someone by mistake, open your Blocked senders list and select the. ... .

Add the sender to your Safe senders list..

Why are my emails going to junk Mac?

Turn Mail's junk mail filter on or off. If your email account filters junk mail on the mail server, messages might be moved to the Junk mailbox even when this option isn't selected.