There are two ways to update to the latest version of SpamSieve:
Automatic Updating
Launch your old version of SpamSieve.
Normally, SpamSieve will automatically check for updates and detect that
a new version is available. If you had turned that feature off:
from the SpamSieve menu. If SpamSieve&s Dock icon is hidden, you can access the Software Update& command via the Message ‣ SpamSieve - Open Window command in Apple Mail or by using the .
Click the Check Now button.
Click the Download & Install button and follow the on-screen
instructions.
The username and password for the automatic update are the ones for
logging into your Mac. They&re not related to SpamSieve. If you don&t
know your password, you can
or update SpamSieve by following
the &Manual Updating& instructions below.
Manual Updating
and click the Download button.
Quit SpamSieve and your mail program.
Replace the old SpamSieve application file with the new one. That is, if
SpamSieve is installed in the Applications folder, drag the new
SpamSieve application icon into the Applications folder and click
Replace when the Finder asks if you want to overwrite the old
Note: If you get an error saying that the file is locked or you do not
have sufficient privileges, drag the old SpamSieve to the trash and
empty it, and then drag the new one into the Applications folder.
Launch SpamSieve and your mail program.
macOS Updates
It&s best to update SpamSieve
updating macOS. To prevent macOS
from updating itself without asking you, go to the App Store section of
System Preferences and make sure that Install macOS updates is unchecked.
Repeated Update Prompts
If SpamSieve keeps telling you that a new version is available, even after
you&ve updated, you may still have the old version somewhere on your Mac. There
should only be one copy of SpamSieve installed, and it should be stored
. If you see a window saying that you
need to update SpamSieve, you can Command-click on the SpamSieve icon in the
Dock. This will reveal the location of the SpamSieve.app file in the Finder
so that you can see where the old version is and delete it (after quitting
SpamSieve).
If your copy of SpamSieve is damaged, you may need to download and install a
fresh copy.
If you are able to launch SpamSieve, you can ask it to reinstall
itself. To do this, follow the Automatic Updating instructions (in
section) but hold down the Option
key when you click the Check Now button.
If SpamSieve won&t launch, follow the Manual Updating instructions
If you&ve uninstalled SpamSieve, you can always get it back by going
and clicking the Download button. After
installing it, you can enter your Serial Name and Serial Number
window to take it out of trial mode. If you can&t
find your serial number, you can .
Please Contact Us
If you are considering uninstalling SpamSieve because you&re having trouble
using it or it doesn&t seem to meet your needs, please see
contact us at . We&re happy to help get you up and running and
always looking for suggestions for how to improve SpamSieve.
Temporarily Disabling SpamSieve
To temporarily disable SpamSieve, you can just uncheck the SpamSieve rule(s)
that you created in your mail program. This is a quick way to turn it off if you
don&t want your mail to be filtered for a while. For example, it can be helpful
to turn off spam filtering while you are troubleshooting your other mail rules.
Removing SpamSieve&s Application Files
If you are using Apple Mail, first choose
To completely uninstall SpamSieve, first quit your mail program and SpamSieve.
(If SpamSieve&s Dock icon is hidden, you can first
in order to quit
SpamSieve&or restart your Mac, which will automatically quit SpamSieve.) Then
delete the
in your Applications folder.
Additionally, follow the instructions below that are specific to your mail
Apple Mail
If you already chose
from , you can skip these steps.
Or, to manually uninstall, follow these steps:
If you are using a single Mac, make sure that you&ve deleted the
SpamSieve rule in Mail&s preferences (described in ). If you are using multiple Macs and wish to continue using
SpamSieve on one of the others, you wouldn&t want the deletion to
propagate through iCloud, so you should uncheck the rule rather than
deleting it.
Quit Apple Mail.
Delete these files:
/Users/&username&/Library/Mail/Bundles/SpamSieve.mailbundle
/Users/&username&/Library/Mail/SpamSieve/
/Users/&username&/Library/LaunchAgents/com.c-command.SpamSieve.LaunchAgent.plist
/Users/&username&/Library/Application Scripts/com.apple.mail/Launch SpamSieve.scpt
section for how to get to
these files. After opening the Library folder, drag the three items
above to the trash. If you do not do this, Mail will report an error saying
that it could not find SpamSieve.
As an example, to remove the first file, open the Library folder. Inside
the Library folder there is a Mail folder. Inside of that is the
Bundles folder. Inside of that is the SpamSieve.mailbundle that you
should drag to the trash.
You can optionally re-enable Apple Mail&s built-in junk mail filter from
the Junk Mail tab of its Preferences window.
Uncheck the Use SpamSieve checkbox in the Advanced section of the
preferences (described in ).
Delete the SpamSieve rule (described in ).
Uncheck SpamSieve (described in ).
Uncheck Use SpamSieve (described in ).
Outlook 2016
Delete the SpamSieve script files in the folder:
/Users/&username&/Library/Scripts/Applications/Microsoft Outlook
and the Outlook - Filter Mailboxes.app application if you are using it.
Outlook 2011
Delete the SpamSieve script files that are located in the Outlook Script Menu
Items folder inside Microsoft User Data (which is probably in your
Documents folder).
Additional scripts are located in the folder:
/Users/&username&/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/Outlook Script Menu Items/
section for how to get to this
Choose Add-ons from Postbox&s Tools menu. Click the remove button
next to SpamSieve Postbox Plug-in.
Go to the Spam filter assistant (described in ).
Removing SpamSieve&s Data Files
You can optionally delete SpamSieve&s data files, which are stored at:
/Users/&username&/Library/Application Support/SpamSieve
/Users/&username&/Library/Preferences/com.c-command.SpamSieve.plist
/Users/&username&/Library/Logs/SpamSieve/
section. If you delete these
files, you will have to re-train SpamSieve if you reinstall it.
Legacy Mail Programs
These are the files to remove for other mail programs:
The scripts are located in Emailer&s AppleScripts folder (next to the
Emailer application).
The scripts are located in the Entourage Script Menu Items folder inside
Microsoft User Data (which is probably in your Documents folder). Go to
Entourage&s Tools menu and select Junk E-mail Protection& (or Junk
Mail Filter in Entourage v.X) and re-enable Entourage&s junk mail filter.
The plug-in is located at:
/Users/&username&/Library/Application Support/Eudora/PlugIns/SpamSieve Eudora Plug-In
After uninstalling the SpamSieve plug-in, you can re-enable Eudora&s own junk
mail support. Control-click on Eudora, choose Show Package Contents, and
move the files between the PlugIns and PlugIns Disabled folders.
Delete the SpamSieve Eudora Helper file and also run the Uninstall Eudora
Helper program that came with SpamSieve. (To access the uninstaller, choose
Show Other Scripts from the SpamSieve menu.)
Outlook Express
The scripts are located in the Script Menu Items folder inside Microsoft
User Data (which is probably in your Documents folder).
Thunderbird
Choose Add-ons (Extensions if you have Thunderbird 1.5) from
Thunderbird&s Tools menu. Select SpamSieve Thunderbird Plug-in in the
list. Click the Uninstall button.
There are four basic steps to installing and using SpamSieve:
Put the SpamSieve application in your applications folder. This is
described in the
Set up your mail program to use SpamSieve to filter your mail. This is
described in sections 3.1 through 3.10 (below) and in the
section (e.g. for Microsoft Entourage). Find the section below
that corresponds to the mail program that you&re using.
Train SpamSieve with some examples of your spam and good messages,
as described in the
section. (This step is
optional but highly recommended. You can skip it if you don&t have
any saved spam messages.)
SpamSieve will launch automatically when new mail arrives. It will
examine each incoming message and move the spam messages to a
separate mailbox. In order to keep SpamSieve&s accuracy high, you&ll
need to tell it about any spam messages that you find in your inbox
or good messages that you find in your spam mailbox. This is
described in the
You can return to this page at any time by going to SpamSieve&s Help menu
and choosing Setting Up and Using SpamSieve. The Help menu also contains
a PDF version of this manual, which is easier to search and print.
The rest of this manual contains detailed information about how SpamSieve works
and how it can be customized. If you have a question, it&s probably answered
here. However, following the above four steps is all most users will need to do
to effectively use SpamSieve.
In addition to these written instructions, there is a
demonstrates how to set up and train SpamSieve with Apple Mail.
Quit Mail. Then double-click the SpamSieve application and choose
Install Apple Mail Plug-In from
at the top-left
of the screen. Now launch Mail, and you should see the SpamSieve -
Change Settings, SpamSieve - Train as Good, and SpamSieve - Train
as Spam items in Mail&s Message menu:
If you do not see these commands, please see the
Choose New Mailbox& (or New&) from Mail&s Mailbox menu,
and create a new mailbox called Spam with location On My
Note: The capital do not call the mailbox SPAM or
Note: See the
section if you prefer
to have your spam accessible from all your devices.
Choose Preferences& from the Mail menu and click the
Rules button in the toolbar. Click the Add Rule button.
Change the description to SpamSieve.
Note: The description of the rule must start with SpamSieve, but you
can add additional text after that, if you want, so long as you don&t use
square brackets, which SpamSieve uses those for .
Change the From (or Any Recipient, prior to macOS 10.12) pop-op menu
to say Every Message. (Every Message is near the bottom of the
menu.) Then, next to Move Message, select the Spam mailbox that you
just created. The rule should now look like:
Note: Although the rule looks like it will move every message to the
Spam mailbox, because you have installed SpamSieve&s plug-in, it will
only move the spam messages.
Now click OK to close the rule and save your changes. Mail may ask if
you wa click Don&t Apply. (If you were to click
Apply now, or in the future when editing a rule, that would filter all
of the currently displayed old messages through SpamSieve, and you would be
obliged to correct any mistakes.)
Drag the SpamSieve rule to the top of the list so that SpamSieve
will be able to filter all of your mail. If you ever need to
temporarily disable SpamSieve, e.g. for testing purposes, you can do
so simply by unchecking the rule.
Make sure that the list shows no other rules for processing
spam/junk messages. If you find any, disable them (by unchecking
them) or delete them.
Select any messages in the Junk mailbox and press the Delete key. The
spam messages will move to the Trash mailbox. (If you do not have a
Junk mailbox you can skip this step.)
Note: You may want to empty your trash before deleting the spam messages.
This will prevent them from being mixed with good messages in the trash.
Go to the Junk Mail tab of Apple Mail&s Preferences window. If
there is a Trust junk mail headers in messages option, uncheck it.
Uncheck Enable junk mail filtering. This will disable its junk mail
filter so that it doesn&t interfere with SpamSieve.
Now proceed to the
To train SpamSieve with spam messages, select one or more of them in
Mail and then choose SpamSieve - Train as Spam from the
Message menu. (There should be spam messages in the Trash
from Step 6, which you can use for the training.) The messages will
be colored in gray and moved to the Spam mailbox.
To train SpamSieve with good messages, select one or more of them and
then choose SpamSieve - Train as Good from the Message menu.
Even with Mail&s built-in junk mail filter disabled, Mail may show a
Not Junk butt you should ignore
this, i.e. always choose SpamSieve - Train as Good rather than
clicking the Not Junk button.
The keyboard shortcuts for these commands are Command-Control-S and
Command-Control-G.
When training multiple batches of messages, you should wait for Mail and
SpamSieve to finish processing one batch before training the next.
Note: If it takes more than a second or for the messages to move after you
train them, please see the
SpamSieve will process new mail automatically and move the spam messages to the
Spam mailbox. Mail may still color some messages brown and show them in the
special Junk mailbox, even though its ow . The Junk mailbox holds spam messages caught by
before they got to your Mac. These messages are not processed by
SpamSieve, so they are not
and should not be trained as spam. It&s also
normal for messages in the Spam mailbox to say that you
this is is because SpamSieve told Mail that they were junk on your behalf.
It&s fine to have additional rules in Mail for processing your good messages.
Just make sure that they are below the SpamSieve rule.
If you ever need to manually ask SpamSieve to sift through a mix of spam and
good messages, select the messages and choose Apply Rules from the
Message menu. SpamSieve will move the ones that it thinks are spam to the
Spam mailbox.
The above is all you need to know about using SpamSieve with Mail. The
section explains some more advanced setup options, such as
configuring the &new mail& notification sound.
If you need to troubleshoot SpamSieve and Apple Mail, see the
Make sure that you are using Airmail 1.3.1 (223) or later.
From the Airmail 3 (or Airmail 2) menu, choose Preferences&.
Click on the Accounts icon at the top of the window. For each IMAP
account in the list:
Click on the More tab and look in the Download section.
Make sure Message Content is checked.
Make sure Attachments is checked.
POP accounts do not have the Download section, so you can skip this
step for them.
Click the Save button.
Click on the Advanced icon at the top of the window and make sure
that Use SpamSieve is checked.
Now proceed to the
To train SpamSieve with spam messages, select the messages,
Control-click, and choose SpamSieve - Train as Spam from the
contextual menu. (Do not use the Mark as Spam command.)
To train SpamSieve with good messages, select the messages,
Control-click, and choose SpamSieve - Train as Good from the
contextual menu. (Do not use the Mark as Not Spam command.)
SpamSieve will process new mail automatically. Messages that it thinks are spam
will be moved to the Junk or Spam folder. Airmail will automatically
launch SpamSieve when there are new messages that need to be filtered or when
you train messages as spam or as good.
If you need to troubleshoot SpamSieve and Airmail, see the
Keyboard Shortcuts
If you prefer not to use the menu commands for training SpamSieve, you can set
up keyboard shortcuts as follows:
Open System Preferences.
Click on the Keyboard icon.
Click on the Shortcuts (or Keyboard Shortcuts on older versions
of Mac OS X) tab.
Select App Shortcuts (or Application Shortcuts on older versions
of Mac OS X).
Click the + button.
For Application, select Airmail 3 (or Airmail 2 or Airmail).
For the Menu Title, enter Spam Sieve - Train as Bad.
Click in the box next to Keyboard Shortcut and enter your desired
shortcut. We recommend Command-Control-S.
Click the Add button.
Click the + button.
For Application, select
Airmail 3 (or Airmail 2 or Airmail).
For the Menu Title, enter Spam Sieve - Train as Good.
Click in the box next to Keyboard Shortcut and enter your desired
shortcut. We recommend Command-Control-G.
Click the Add button.
When the keyboard shortcuts are set up correctly, you will see them in Airmail&s
Message ‣ Mark as Reminder menu.
Open GyazMail&s Preferences window and click Junk Filter.
Make sure that Enable Junk filtering is checked and that the
pop-up menu says SpamSieve.
By default, GyazMail will color the incoming spam messages brown. If you
want the spam messages to also be put in a separate folder, create a
folder called Spam. Then click on Rules in the Preferences
window and create a new rule as shown:
Now proceed to the
To train SpamSieve with spam messages, select the messages, go to
GyazMail&s Message menu, and choose Junk ‣ Mark as Junk.
To train SpamSieve with good messages, select the messages, go to
GyazMail&s Message menu, and choose Junk ‣ Mark as Not Junk.
You can also use the Junk button on the toolbar or the Message ‣
Status ‣ Junk menu command to toggle the junk status of the selected
SpamSieve will process new mail automatically. If you ever need to manually ask
it to sift through a mix of spam and good messages, select the messages and
choose Junk ‣ Recheck Junk Status from the Message menu.
If you need to troubleshoot SpamSieve and GyazMail, see the
Moving Trained Messages
Normally, when you mark a message as junk or not junk in GyazMail, the message
stays in the same mailbox. If you would like spam messages to move to the Spam
mailbox and good messages to move to the inbox, you can set up two rules like
Then, instead of using the Junk and Not Junk buttons to train messages,
you can use the Message ‣ Apply Rule ‣ Train as Spam and Message ‣ Apply
Rule ‣ Train as Good menu commands to train and move them at the same time.
If desired, you can set up keyboard shortcuts for training. For example, give
the Train as Spam rule a keyboard shortcut of Command-Control-S, change the
Description of the rule to Train as Spam\@^s.
Make sure that you are using MailMate 1.1.2 or later.
In MailMate&s Security preferences, make sure that Enable is
checked next to SpamSieve and that Apply to new messages in is
set to Inbox.
The Mark messages as Not Junk if score is below setting does not
affect SpamSieve or its filtering. Rather, if SpamSieve thinks a message
is less spammy than the score that you enter, MailMate will tell the mail
server that it&s not junk, and it will also decide that it&s safe to
display any remote images that the message references. If you would like
to see remote images for all the messages that SpamSieve thinks are good,
you should set this to 50.
Now proceed to the
To train SpamSieve with spam messages, select the messages and click
the Move to Junk button, or choose Message ‣ Junk State ‣
Junk from the menu bar, or move the message to the Junk
To train SpamSieve with good messages, select the messages and click
the Not Junk or Move Out of Junk button, or choose Message
‣ Junk State ‣ Not Junk from the menu bar, or move the message out
of the Junk mailbox.
SpamSieve will process new mail automatically. The SpamSieve Score column
shows how spammy SpamSieve thought each message was, on a scale from 0 to 100
(with 50 and above meaning spam). (The Spam Score column shows the spam
level reported by the server junk filter, if any.)
If you need to troubleshoot SpamSieve and MailMate, see the
Open Mailsmith&s Preferences window and click on the Spam
Handling pane. Make sure that Use SpamSieve is checked. Uncheck
Honor SpamAssassin and BogoFilter headers.
Now proceed to the
To train SpamSieve with spam messages, select one or more of them and
then choose Mark as Spam from Mailsmith&s Message menu.
To train SpamSieve with good messages, select one or more of them and
then choose Mark as Non-Spam from Mailsmith&s Message menu.
If you ever need to manually ask it to sift through a mix of spam and good
messages, choose Recalculate Spam Score from the Message menu.
The above is all you need to know about using SpamSieve with Mailsmith. The
section explains some more advanced setup options.
For more information about using SpamSieve with Mailsmith, please see
Chapter 8 of the Mailsmith User Manual.
If you need to troubleshoot SpamSieve and Mailsmith, see the
These instructions apply to Outlook 2011 (14.x), from Microsoft Office
2011. If you are using Outlook 2016 (15.x) from Office 365, please see the
section. If you&re using the initial release of Office
2011, please see the
section. If you are using
Microsoft Entourage, please see the
Go to Outlook&s Tools menu and select Junk E-mail Protection&.
Turn off Outlook&s junk filter by clicking None and then OK.
Switch to SpamSieve by clicking on its icon in the Dock. Go to the
SpamSieve menu and choose Preferences&. Make sure that
is checked and click the Load
button, then the Outlook button.
Choose Install Outlook Scripts from the SpamSieve menu. After you
quit and re-launch Outlook, you should see four SpamSieve items in
Outlook&s Scripts menu:
Choose Rules& from Outlook&s Tools menu. Click on the source list
item under On My Computer corresponding to the type of account you
that have (e.g. POP, IMAP, or Exchange). Ignore the Exchange Server
section of the window, if any.
If you have more than one kind of account, you will need to repeat Steps
4&6 for each account type.
If you had previously used SpamSieve with Microsoft Entourage,
delete any SpamSieve rules that Outlook brought over from your
Entourage setup.
Click the + button. Change the name of the rule to
SpamSieve - Set Category.
For a POP account:
Under When a new message arrives it should say All
For an IMAP or Exchange account:
Under When a new message arrives it should say Folder Is
INBOX (&Account Name&).
When you create a new IMAP rule, the pop-up menu at the left will
automatically say Folder; when you create new Exchange rule,
the pop-up menu will say From and you will have to change it
to Folder.
Next, you need to choose the inbox from the pop-up menu at the
right. You may have to choose Choose Folder& and type &in& to
be able to select the inbox.
Click the + button to add an additional rule condition for
each IMAP/Exchange account that you have. Change the pop-up menus
to say Folder Is INBOX (&Account Name&) as before.
Click on If all conditions are met and change it to If any
conditions are met.
Under Do the following, click on the - button to the
right of Change status and Not Junk E-mail to delete the
Change status action.
Click on the pop-up menu that says Set Category and select
Run AppleScript.
Then click the Script& button and Select the SpamSieve - Set
Category.scpt file. This file is stored in the Outlook Script Menu
Items folder (which is probably inside the Microsoft User Data
folder inside your Documents folder):
Make sure that Do not apply other rules& is unchecked. For a
POP account, the rule should now look like this:
For an IMAP or Exchange account, the rule should now look like this:
Click OK to close the sheet.
Drag the SpamSieve - Set Category rule to the top of the list.
In the Rules window, as before, repeat the following steps for each
type of account that you have (e.g. POP, IMAP, or Exchange) under &On My
Computer&.
Click the + button. Change the name of the rule to
SpamSieve - Move Messages.
Under When a new message arrives, click on the pop-up menu
and change it to say Category. Click on the pop-up menu for
None and change it to Junk. The condition should now say
Category Is Junk.
Click the + button to the right of Junk to make a new
condition.
Click on From for the new condition and change it
to say Category. Click on the pop-up menu for None and
change it to Uncertain Junk. The condition should now say
Category Is Uncertain Junk.
Click on If all conditions are met and change it to If any
conditions are met.
Under Do the following, click on the - button to the
right of Not Junk E-mail to delete the Change status
Click on the pop-up menu that says Set Category and select
Move Message.
Change the menu at the right from None to Junk E-mail. You may
have to choose Choose Folder& and type &Junk& to be able to select
the Junk E-mail folder. The rule should now look like:
Click OK to close the sheet.
Drag the SpamSieve - Move Messages rule so that it is just
below the SpamSieve - Set Category rule(s) (and above your
other rules).
Now proceed to the
To train SpamSieve with spam messages, select one or more of them and
then choose SpamSieve - Train as Spam from Outlook&s Scripts
To train SpamSieve with good messages, select one or more of them and
then choose SpamSieve - Train as Good from Outlook&s Scripts
The keyboard shortcuts for these commands are Command-Control-S and
Command-Control-G.
SpamSieve will process new mail automatically. If you ever need to manually ask
it to sift through a mix of spam and good messages, select the messages and
choose SpamSieve - Set Category from Outlook&s script menu. Then choose
Rules ‣ Apply All from the Message menu.
The above is all you need to know about using SpamSieve with Outlook. The
section explains some more advanced setup options.
If you need to troubleshoot SpamSieve and Outlook, see the
These instructions apply to ,
from Microsoft Office 2016 and Outlook 365. For other
versions of Outlook, please see the
Go to Outlook&s Tools menu and select Rules. Uncheck or delete
any rules for filtering out junk/spam e-mails.
In the Finder, choose Utilities from the Go menu and open the
Script Editor (or AppleScript Editor) application. Open its
Preferences window. Click on the General tab, and make sure that
Show Script menu in menu bar is checked.
Switch to SpamSieve by clicking on its icon in the Dock. Go to the
SpamSieve menu and choose Preferences&. Make sure that
is checked and click the Load
button, then the Outlook button.
Choose Install Outlook Scripts from the SpamSieve menu. When in
Outlook, you should now see five SpamSieve items in Scripts menu at
the top-right of your screen:
Note: Unlike previous versions, Outlook 2016 does not have its own
Scripts menu, so these instructions have you use the system one.
Unfortunately, the system Scripts menu does not support keyboard
shortcuts. If you would like to have keyboard shortcuts for SpamSieve&s
training commands, see &FastScripts Keyboard Shortcuts& below.
Now proceed to the
To train SpamSieve with spam messages, select one or more of them and
then choose SpamSieve - Train as Spam from the Scripts menu.
To train SpamSieve with good messages, select one or more of them and
then choose SpamSieve - Train as Good from the Scripts menu.
Install Outlook - Filter Mailboxes helper application. To do this:
to download the Outlook - Filter Mailboxes.dmg file.
Open the Outlook - Filter Mailboxes.dmg file and drag the
Outlook - Filter Mailboxes.app file to your Applications
folder. If it asks whether you want to replace an existing item,
click Replace to replace the old version with the new version.
Drag the Outlook - Filter Mailboxes.dmg file to the trash.
Double-click the Outlook - Filter Mailboxes.app file in your
Applications folder. You will need to launch this application
whenever you want SpamSieve to monitor Outlook for new messages that
need to be filtered.
You can optionally set up Outlook - Filter Mailboxes.app as a Login Item in the Users &
Groups section of System Preferences if you want it to launch
automatically.
SpamSieve will process new mail automatically every five minutes. Any spam
messages will be moved to the Junk folder. If you ever need to manually ask
SpamSieve to sift through a mix of spam and good messages, select the messages
and choose SpamSieve - Move If Spam from the Scripts menu.
The above is all you need to know about using SpamSieve with Outlook. The
section explains some more advanced setup options. If
the filtering doesn&t seem to be working properly, you can check the setup as
described in the
Advanced Setup for Large Inboxes
As set up above, Outlook - Filter Mailboxes looks for spam messages among
the unread messages in the inbox. It moves spam messages to the Junk folder
and leaves good messages in the inbox (marked with the Good category).
If you have lots of messages in your inbox, it can take a long time for Outlook
to check for new messages there, and it may become unresponsive during the
check. One way to work around this is to move older messages out of your inbox,
e.g. to a separate folder such as Archive. Another way is to use the
advanced setup described here, so that SpamSieve looks for new messages in the
InboxSpamSieve folder (which is kept empty) instead of in your actual inbox:
For each account, create a new folder called InboxSpamSieve in the
For each account, create a rule in Outlook that says if Folder Is INBOX
(AccountName) then do Move Message InboxSpamSieve (AccountName):
This will move all new messages to the InboxSpamSieve folder. Outlook
- Filter Mailboxes will scan this folder instead of your regular inbox.
Any good messages will be moved to the regular inbox. Any spam messages will
be moved to the Junk folder. Because no old messages collect in the
InboxSpamSieve folder, processing it will always be fast.
some additional advanced features such as checking for new messages more
frequently and enabling debug logging.
Finding the Junk Folder
SpamSieve moves both automatically filtered spam messages and trained spam
messages to the standard junk mail folders in Outlook. Prior to Outlook 15.36,
Outlook had a single top-level folder called Junk E-mail, with per-account
folders inside. In Outlook 15.36, there is a separate Junk folder within the
section for each account. For more information, please see .
FastScripts Keyboard Shortcuts
If you would like training keyboard shortcuts, as described in Step 5, you can
set up the standard SpamSieve keyboard shortcuts as follows:
Download and install . (It is free for up to 10
keyboard shortcuts.)
Launch FastScripts.
From the FastScripts icon menu, go to the FastScripts submenu and
choose Preferences&.
Click on the Script Shortcuts tab.
In the Microsoft Outlook section, double-click on (none) in the
Shortcut column next to SpamSieve - Train as Good. It will enter
edit mode. Type Command-Control-G to set the shortcut.
In the Microsoft Outlook section, double-click on (none) in the
Shortcut column next to SpamSieve - Train as Spam. It will enter
edit mode. Type Command-Control-S to set the shortcut.
Choose Install Postbox Plug-In from SpamSieve&s SpamSieve
Launch Postbox. Choose Add-ons from the Tools menu.
If you have Postbox 2.5 or later, click on the action (gear) menu in
the upper-right corner of the window and choose Install Add-on
From File&. If you have Postbox 2.0, click the Install& button
in the window that just opened.
Click on the Desktop button, select the
SpamSieveForPostbox.xpi file, and click Open.
Click the Install Now button.
Quit Postbox and re-launch it. If you now go to the Tools menu
and choose Add-ons you should see the SpamSieve Postbox
Plug-In listed there. Next to it will be the version of the
plug-in. The current plug-in version is always listed at the bottom
of SpamSieve&s about box. You can now delete the
SpamSieveForPostbox.xpi file from your desktop.
Choose Preferences& from the Postbox menu and click on
Accounts. For each of your accounts in the list at the left
(plus On My Mac), click on Junk Settings and make sure
Enable adaptive junk mail controls for this account
is checked.
Move new junk messages to is checked.
Trust junk mail headers set by is unchecked.
It is generally a good idea to uncheck the items under &Do not mark mail as
junk if the sender is in& since these can prevent SpamSieve from filtering
out certain spam messages.
Choose Preferences& from the Postbox menu and click on
Privacy. Make sure that When I mark messages as junk is
Now proceed to the
To train SpamSieve with spam messages, select one or more of them and
then choose Message ‣ Mark ‣ As Junk, click the bullet in the junk
status column of the message list, or press the J key.
To train SpamSieve with good messages, select one or more of them and
then choose Message ‣ Mark ‣ As Not Junk, click the junk icon in the
junk status column of the message list, or press the J key.
You can also customize the toolbar to add a Junk/Not Junk button.
Note: If Postbox already thinks that a message is junk, it may not let you
mark it as junk&and likewise for not junk. That&s OK; it is enough to train
SpamSieve by marking the messages that are misclassified in Postbox.
SpamSieve will process new mail automatically. If you ever need to manually ask
it to sift through a mix of spam and good messages, select the messages and
choose Message ‣ Mark ‣ Run Junk Mail Controls.
The above is all you need to know about using SpamSieve with Postbox. The
section explains some more advanced setup options.
If you need to troubleshoot SpamSieve and Postbox, see the
These instructions apply to PowerMail 6 and PowerMail 5. Please see the
section if you need to setup an older version of PowerMail.
Make sure that you are using a POP (not IMAP) account.
Go to the Mark as Spam pane of PowerMail&s Preferences
window. Click the Spam filter assistant& button and tell the
assistant that you want to use SpamSieve.
Now proceed to the
To train SpamSieve with spam messages, select one or more of them and
then choose Mark as Spam from the Mail menu.
To train SpamSieve with good messages, select one or more of them and
then choose Mark as Good from the Mail menu.
SpamSieve will process new mail automatically. If you ever need to manually ask
it to sift through a mix of spam and good messages, select the messages and
choose Perform Filter ‣ Perform All Filters from the Mail menu.
The above is all you need to know about using SpamSieve with PowerMail. The
section explains some more advanced setup options. For more
information about how to configure PowerMail&s handling of spam messages, please
see the PowerMail documentation.
If you need to troubleshoot SpamSieve and PowerMail, see the
SpamSieve works with Web mail accounts, provided that they allow access via POP,
IMAP, or Exchange. This includes Gmail, iCloud, Yahoo, AOL, Outlook.com, and
most other Web mail providers. Just configure Apple Mail to access your account
and then follow the normal SpamSieve setup instructions in the
section. SpamSieve will then filter your Web mail when Apple Mail is
You can train SpamSieve from within Apple Mail. If you use the ,
you can also train SpamSieve from your Web browser by moving messages into the
special training mailboxes.
See also the
Hiding Special Gmail Mailboxes From IMAP
Gmail has some special mailboxes that most users do not want to appear in Apple
Mail. This is because these mailboxes contain duplicate copies of messages that
are already in your other mailboxes. Additionally, the contents of these
mailboxes are not filtered by SpamSieve or other Mail rules. When using Gmail,
it is recommended that you hide these mailboxes from IMAP:
In Gmail, click on the gear menu at the top right and select
Click on Labels (which is next to General at the top of the
In the System labels section:
Uncheck Show in IMAP on the line for Starred.
Uncheck Show in IMAP on the line for Important.
Uncheck Show in IMAP on the line for All Mail.
SpamSieve does not have distinct &training& and &working& modes. As soon as you
install it, it is always learning from the messages it sees and always filtering
out the spam that it finds.
Although you can start using SpamSieve immediately and just
that it makes, it will do a better job of filtering if you use some
of your old mail to do an initial training. This simply means that you give it
some examples of messages you consider to be spam, and ones which you do not.
You do this by selecting some messages in your mail program and choosing a
training command from the menu (as described in the last step of the
for your mail program). SpamSieve collects information from the
messages it&s trained with into its , which it uses to predict whether
subsequent messages are spam. Don& it learns quickly!
How many messages you should train SpamSieve with depends on how many old
messages you have and on how much time you want to put into the process. 195
spam messages and 105 representative good ones are enough for most people to get
very good accuracy, but it&s OK if you don&t have that many. The important
points are:
Do not use more than 1,000 messages.
Using up to 1,000 recent messages in the initial training lets
SpamSieve start out with a high level of accuracy. In general, the
more messages you train SpamSieve with, the better its accuracy will
be. However, using more than 1,000 messages initially, would &fill
up& SpamSieve&s corpus with older messages, making it slower and
less effective at adapting to new kinds of spam that you&ll receive
in the future.
The messages should be approximately 65% spam.
For example, use 650 spams and 350 good messages or 65 spams and 35 good
messages. It is better to use fewer messages in the initial training (i.e.
not use all your saved mail) than to deviate from the recommended
percentage. For example, if you have 500 good messages but only 195 saved
spam messages, don&t train SpamSieve with all 695 messages. Instead, train
it with the 195 spams and about 105 representative good messages.
In order to monitor your progress, you can go to SpamSieve&s Filter menu and
choose . The Corpus section in the middle of the
Statistics window shows how many good and spam messages SpamSieve has been
trained with, and what percentage of them are spam. After the initial training,
SpamSieve will , and you&ll only need to train it
to correct mistakes.
After the initial training, you don&t have to worry about the number or
percentage of messages in the corpus. SpamSieve will automatically learn from
new messages as they arrive and keep its corpus properly balanced.
Accuracy will improve with time, but if you&ve used at least 100 or so messages
in the initial training, SpamSieve should immediately start moving some of the
incoming spam messages to your spam folder. If you don&t see results right away,
in your mail program. After a few hundred messages of each
type are in the corpus, SpamSieve should be catching most of your spam.
Now you&re done setting up SpamSieve. The
explains how you can keep SpamSieve&s accuracy high by telling it if it puts any
messages in the wrong mailbox.
SpamSieve examines each incoming message and moves the spam messages into a
separate spam mailbox. It leaves the good messages alone, so they will stay in
the inbox or be processed by your other mail rules. In order to keep SpamSieve&s
accuracy high, you&ll need to correct any mistakes that it makes:
If you find a spam message that&s not in the spam mailbox, train it as
If you find a good message in the spam mailbox, train it as good.
Normally, the
preferences are enabled. This means that training a single message as good will
make SpamSieve classify all future messages from that message&s sender as good.
Likewise, training a message as spam will make SpamSieve classify all future
messages from that message&s sender as spam. Normally, the
preference is also enabled, which will let SpamSieve learn from the
message&s contents so that it can recognize future messages that are similar
even if the sender is different.
How to Correct Mistakes
To correct a mistake, train SpamSieve using the menu commands recommended at the
end of the
for your mail program. For
example, with Apple Mail you would select the message and choose SpamSieve -
Train as Good or SpamSieve - Train as Spam from Mail&s Message menu.
Always train SpamSieve using the menu commands. Do not move the messages into or
out of the spam mailbox yourself, as this will bypass SpamSieve.
Correcting All the Mistakes
You must correct all of SpamSieve&s mistakes or its accuracy will deteriorate
over time. The reason for this is that SpamSieve assumes that it classified a
message correctly unless you tell it otherwise, and it will learn based on that
assumption (unless you turn off the
preference). Also, the sooner you correct SpamSieve, the better. By
correcting SpamSieve, you ensure that it&s always acting based on accurate
information.
Which Messages to Train
After the , it is not necessary (or recommended) to train
SpamSieve with messages that are not mistakes.
Do train all the spam messages that get through to your inbox. Do this
even for phishing messages, image spams, and messages from forged senders
that you might think would confuse SpamSieve. It&s best to .
Don&t delete spam messages from your iPhone&s inbox because that would
prevent you from training them as spam on the Mac.
Do not train messages that SpamSieve automatically put in the spam
mailbox. Regardless of which
it assigned them,
SpamSieve already thinks that they are spam.
Do not train messages that a
automatically caught in
the Junk mailbox or Bulk Mail mailbox.
Do not train as spam messages that are merely unwanted, i.e. messages
Legitimate mailing lists that you no longer wish to read.
Companies that you have done business with.
People that you know who send or forward annoying messages.
These messages are not spam, so training them as such could confuse
SpamSieve. For mailing lists, there should be instructions at the bottom of
the e-mail to unsubscribe. Social media sites have ways that you can
configure which types of messages they send you. For other types of unwanted
messages, see you can optionally create a rule in your mail program above
the SpamSieve rule to move or delete them before SpamSieve sees them.
Do not train quarantine digests from a server spam filter. These
messages are not spam, but they contain lots of spammy words. It&s best
the server spam filter or to create a rule in your
mail program above the SpamSieve rule to move these messages to another
mailbox before SpamSieve sees them.
Do not train messages in Gmail&s All Mail, Important, or
Starred mailboxes as spam, as these messages are duplicates not
filtered by SpamSieve. For more information, see the
section of the manual.
Do not delete unwanted
rules that
SpamSieve auto-created. Instead, let SpamSieve automatically disable the
matching rules when you train messages as spam or as good.
Undoing a Training
If you make a mistake and tell SpamSieve that a message is spam when it is
actually good (or vice-versa), simply correct yourself as you would correct
SpamSieve. That is, if the message is good, if it is spam,
train it as spam. SpamSieve will &undo& the previous, incorrect, training.
Disable Other Spam Filters and Rules
When using SpamSieve, turn off any other spam filters that you&ve installed on
your Mac. Disable any manual rules that you&ve created that move messages to the
Spam mailbox or trash. This will make it clear which messages SpamSieve did
and didn&t catch, which is necessary for you to be able to properly correct it.
If you really need those manual rules, you can recreate them using SpamSieve&s
or put the rules above SpamSieve&s rule(s) so that the messages are
moved or deleted before SpamSieve sees them.
Using SpamSieve With Multiple Macs
Please see the
section for information about how
to ensure that you are properly correcting mistakes when multiple copies of
SpamSieve are filtering the same mail account.
Resetting SpamSieve
Not correcting all the mistakes will cause SpamSieve to learn incorrect
information, which will reduce the filtering accuracy. The only way to fix this
is to reset all of SpamSieve&s training:
Quit SpamSieve and your mail program.
and drag the SpamSieve folder to the trash:
/Users/&username&/Library/Application Support/SpamSieve/
Follow the instructions in the
If you are accessing the same IMAP or Exchange mail account from multiple Macs
running SpamSieve, it can be difficult to know which copy of SpamSieve needs to
be trained to . There are several ways to deal with this
(in order of preference):
Run SpamSieve on a single Mac and let it clean your inbox for . All the training is done from that Mac. This is the simplest
solution. It works well when the Mac with SpamSieve will be running most
of the time, and when you can easily access that Mac to do the training.
Run SpamSieve on a single Mac using the . This setup works
well when the Mac with SpamSieve will be running most of the time. When
you&re away from that Mac, you can remotely train SpamSieve from any Mac,
iOS device, or even via Web mail.
Run SpamSieve on all the Macs and uncheck the
preference (on all the Macs). You can train whichever Mac you
happen to be using at the moment. This will have lower filtering accuracy
than (1) or (2) but is useful in situations when you do not have a single
Mac that is always available for mail filtering. With auto-training off,
you may find it especially helpful to enable .
Run SpamSieve on all the Macs, being careful to only let one copy of
SpamSieve run at a time, and to always correct all the mistakes before
switching to another Mac. This will give better filtering accuracy than (3)
but is a lot more work.
Server Spam Mailbox
With the normal setup, spam messages are stored locally, so they are only
accessible on one Mac. If you are using multiple Macs, you can instead
so that the same spam mailbox is visible on all the
Training Data
When upgrading to a new Mac or using setup (3) or (4) above, you can
from one Mac to another. This is only recommended
if the two Macs will be filtering the same mail account. Macs filtering
different people&s mail should be trained separately for the best filtering
Do not copy SpamSieve&s files using a file synchronization program or cloud
syncing utility such as Dropbox while the SpamSieve application is running.
Doing so can corrupt the files.
License Info
An individual user running SpamSieve on multiple personal Macs generally only
needs to purchase one SpamSieve license. The
section of the manual
has more information about the license policy.
iCloud Rule Syncing
Multiple Macs using the same iCloud account will automatically have the same
rules in Apple Mail. If you want to use the SpamSieve rule on one Mac but not
the other, you should uncheck it on the Mac where you want it to be disabled. Do
not delete the rule because that would (through syncing) delete it from the
other Mac as well.
POP Accounts
If you are accessing the same POP mail account from multiple Macs, you can
safely run SpamSieve on all of the Macs simultaneously. Each Mac is entirely
separate from the others, so you don&t have to worry about any of the training
issues that IMAP and Exchange accounts have. The downside is that it&s more work
to train each copy of SpamSieve separately.
Your Mac as the Spam Filter
Due to limitations of the iOS platform, there is not currently an iPhone version
of SpamSieve. However, you can use SpamSieve on your Mac to keep the spam off
your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. The Mac has much more bandwidth and processing
power, so it makes sense to do the spam filtering there, anyway. When you check
for mail on your iPhone, you won&t waste time or battery power downloading or
processing spam messages.
Use IMAP or Exchange to Synchronize Your Mailboxes
To use SpamSieve with your iPhone, you&ll need to set both the Mac and the
iPhone to connect to your mail server using either the
mail protocol:
Many popular mail hosts&such as Apple&s iCloud, Gmail, and Yahoo
automatically uses IMAP.
Most other modern mail hosts also offer IMAP support.
Some hosts, such as Comcast, can enable IMAP support if you .
Some mail hosts only offer support for the older
protocol. This
makes it impossible for your Mac to clean the spam off your iPhone. We
recommend switching to .
If your mail host supports IMAP but you are not using it, you can change the
settings on your Mac to connect via IMAP instead of POP. Please see the
section or read
about this.
How IMAP/Exchange Synchronization Works
When using IMAP or Exchange, all computers and mobile devices that connect to
the same mail account will share the same mailboxes. The contents of the
mailboxes will be synchronized automatically. The syncing happens when you open
the Mail application, not when you connect the Mac and iPhone and sync in iTunes.
Filtering Out the Spam
You don&t have to do anything extra for SpamSieve to filter the spam on your
iPhone. SpamSieve is already removing the spam from your Mac&s inbox, so the
normal IMAP/Exchange synchronization will automatically remove the spam messages
from the iPhone&s inbox as well.
When your mail program is running on your Mac, it will periodically check for
new mail. (See also the
section.) New
messages will arrive in the inbox, and SpamSieve will move the spam messages to
the spam mailbox. When the iPhone checks for new mail, the spam messages will
generally already have been moved out of the inbox.
If the iPhone happens to see a new spam message before the Mac does:
The message will appear in the inbox for a short while. When the Mac sees
it, it will move it to the spam mailbox and it will disappear from the
inbox on the iPhone.
The iPhone supports push e-mail, which lets it see new messages
instantly. If you receive a lot of spam, you may prefer to turn off the
push feature. That will give the Mac a chance to filter the messages
before you see them on the iPhone. You may also want to adjust your
so that it doesn&t show
banners or play sounds when new e-mails arrive.
If you mark a message as read on the iPhone before the Mac sees it, the
Mac will not apply its rules (such as SpamSieve) to the message.
Checking the Spam Mailbox
With the standard setup, SpamSieve puts the spam that it catches in the Spam
mailbox on your Mac. The spam messages are removed from the server and stored
locally on the Mac. This is faster, and it means that the spam messages won&t
count towards your server quota. However, this also makes it impossible to view
the spam messages when you are away from your Mac.
Some users prefer to store the Spam mailbox on the server. This way, if
SpamSieve accidentally puts a good message in the Spam mailbox, you can
access the message on the iPhone when away from the Mac. To do this, see
Training SpamSieve to Correct Mistakes
With the standard setup, you train SpamSieve directly from your Mac. If a spam
message gets through to your inbox, you should not delete it from the iPhone
because that would prevent you from .
section describes how to set up Apple
Mail for remote training. If you&ll be away from your Mac for long periods of
time, you can then train SpamSieve directly from the iPhone. Correcting mistakes
promptly will keep SpamSieve running at peak accuracy.
Troubleshooting iPhone Spam Filtering
If there are spam messages in the inbox on your iPhone:
If the Mac hasn&t yet downloaded the spam messages at all, you may need to
adjust the
preference in
Mail. Make sure that the IDLE command is enabled in Mail&s preferences
for your account. With some servers,
to check for new messages every minute rather than Automatically.
If the spam messages are in the inbox on your Mac, this is not an
iPhone-specific problem. You should follow the regular
instructions.
If the spam messages are in the iPhone&s inbox but in the Mac&s Spam
mailbox, try using &pull-to-refresh& to get the iPhone to resynchronize
with the server. It should then update its inbox and remove the spam
messages from the inbox.
If the spam messages are still in the iPhone&s inbox, try logging into
your mail account via Web mail.
If everything looks good in Web mail, there is likely a problem with
your iPhone&s connection to the mail server.
If the spam is in the Web mail inbox but not the Mac&s, there is
likely a problem with the mail program on your Mac.
This section discusses how to change your Apple Mail setup from POP to IMAP so
that you can use SpamSieve for . A similar setup will
also work with other mail programs.
Choose Preferences& from the Mail menu and click on Accounts.
Your account(s) will be listed at the left of the window. If it already
says IMAP or iCloud under your account, there&s nothing more that
you need to do.
If it says POP, you will need to disable the POP account and create a
new IMAP one. Click on the POP account and make note of the contents of
the Server Settings (if present) and Account Information tabs.
Then click the Remove now button to remove from the server any
messages that you&ve already downloaded.
Click the + button at the bottom of the window and follow the steps
to create a new account. Choose IMAP for the account type. For the
server and login, enter the information that you noted for the POP
account. (Note: Some providers use a different incoming mail server
name for IMAP.) Put &IMAP& at the end of the account&s description so
that you can tell this account apart from the old one.
You should now be able to check for mail, and Mail will be using IMAP
instead of POP. There will be two sets of mailboxes (Inbox, Sent,
etc.) in the main window. If desired, you can go to each of these
mailboxes and Option-drag the messages from the old mailboxes to the IMAP
ones. Holding down the Option key when dragging the messages will cause
Mail to copy the messages to the IMAP server. Your original messages
will remain in the POP mailboxes on your Mac in case something goes wrong.
Go back to Mail&s Preferences window, click on the POP account, and
uncheck Enable this account (in the Account Information tab, or
the Advanced tab on Mac OS X 10.11 and earlier). You will be using
the new IMAP account instead, although the old POP settings, and any
messages that you didn&t transfer to the IMAP mailboxes, will still be
available should you want to go back to the old setup.
On your iOS device, tap on Settings ‣ Mail. For each of your
accounts, tap on the account name. At the top of the account settings it
should say IMAP or Exchange. If it says POP, you will need to
deactivate that account on the iPhone (by sliding the switch next to the
Mail setting) and then choose Add Account to re-add your account
as IMAP or Exchange.
For best results with SpamSieve&and for e-mail in general&we recommend a mail
host that:
Supports IMAP or Exchange (Not Just POP)
This will keep your mailboxes and messages synchronized across multiple
devices and let you use SpamSieve on your Mac for .
IMAP is preferred, as it is supported by more mail clients.
Lets You Control Its Junk Filter
You don&t want the server&s filter to accidentally delete good messages
before you even see them. For more information, see the
Is Not Your Internet Service Provider (ISP)
This way you won&t be forced to change your address if you change ISPs, e.g.
due to switching cable to fiber or moving to a different city.
Can Use Your Domain Name
If your e-mail address is at a domain name that you control (rather than at
the provider&s domain), you won&t be locked into your current host should
you ever become dissatisfied with it. You&ll be able to easily switch to a
different host without having to change your e-mail address.
E-mail is important. If your mail provider does not offer the features that you
want, we recommend switching to one that does. , , , and
are some inexpensive hosts that we&ve used and
recommend. Other ones that&ve heard good things about are , ,
SpamSieve works with your e-mail program to filter out spam messages.
First, the mail program downloads new messages from the mail server. It
then passes the messages to a plug-in or AppleScript, which in turn
passes them to the SpamSieve application. SpamSieve analyzes the
messages to see whether they are spam. It returns the verdict to the
plug-in or script, which then directs the mail program to move the
messages to another folder.
Some of the e-mail programs that SpamSieve supports let you control the
order in which the rules (a.k.a.&filters or mail actions) that you have
created process mail. How you order the SpamSieve rule is up to you. If
you get a lot of spam that matches the rules you use to organize your
mail, you might want to run the SpamSieve rule first. This will allow
it to find spam among all your messages. If you would rather deal with spam
manually than have any false positives, then you might want to run the
SpamSieve rule last, after all your other rules have been given a
chance to match and file away messages from known senders. Be sure to
check the SpamSieve preferences for additional filtering options.
For added safety, you can specify that addresses that you&ve sent mail
to will never send you spam. To do this in:
Apple Mail
Open the Rules section of Mail&s Preferences window and edit
the SpamSieve rule. Change the condition that says Every
Message to Sender is not in my Previous Recipients. Mail will
then assume that such messages are good, without showing them to
SpamSieve.
Create an outgoing rule that uses
to add your messages& recipients to SpamSieve&s whitelist.
Open Eudora&s Junk Mail settings and make sure that Mail isn&t
junk if the sender is in an address book is checked. Eudora
automatically adds your recipients to its History List, which is
considered to be part of the address book.
Create a rule that uses
to add your sent messages& recipients to SpamSieve&s whitelist.
Create an outgoing rule that uses
to add your messages& recipients to SpamSieve&s whitelist.
Select Do not mark mail as junk if the sender is in Collected
Addresses in Postbox&s Accounts preferences.
Create an outgoing filter that uses
to add your messages& recipients to SpamSieve&s whitelist.
Thunderbird
Select Do not mark mail as junk if the sender is in Collected
Addresses in Thunderbird&s Account Settings window.
For Apple Mail, Eudora, Postbox, and Thunderbird the above settings will
completely hide these messages from SpamSieve. Thus:
You might not want to do this if you regularly receive spam
messages that are forged so as to appear as though they
were sent from one of your previous correspondents. SpamSieve
won&t see the messages, so it will have no chance of catching
SpamSieve will not be able to auto-train itself with these
messages. You should be sure to manually train it with some
examples of these messages, so that it has seen some examples
of good messages with this type of content.
You can set your mail program to automatically delete old spam messages.
However, if you do this, you should still review your spam messages to make sure
that no good messages are deleted. Not only would you lose such messages if you
don&t , but SpamSieve would also incorrectly learn
that they are spam, leading to more mistakes in the future.
Apple Mail
You can quickly delete all the messages in the Spam mailbox using the
Mail also has a feature to automatically delete old spam messages from the
Junk mailbox. You can use this feature if you tell SpamSieve to put spam
messages in the Junk mailbox instead of the Spam mailbox.
If you do this, be careful not to use the Junk and Not Junk buttons that
will appear in Mail when the Junk you should always use
the SpamSieve - Train as Good and SpamSieve - Train as Spam commands
instead. You can use the Customize Toolbar& command in Mail&s View menu
to remove the Junk button from the toolbar. Also, if you select a message
that SpamSieve has classified as spam, Mail will show a banner saying that you
marked it as junk. Ignore this.
If you want to store your spam locally (On My Mac) you can skip this
step. If you want to store your spam on the mail server, make sure that
Mail knows which mailbox is your Junk mailbox. To do this, create a
new mailbox under your account. Select it and choose Mailbox ‣ Use This
Mailbox For ‣ Junk.
Open Mail&s Preferences window and click on Junk Mail. If
Enable junk mail filtering is unchecked, and you can already see the
special Junk mailbox near the top of Mail&s mailbox list, you can
skip to Step 3.
Otherwise, make sure that Enable junk mail filtering is checked. Select
Move it to the Junk mailbox. If Mail asks whether you want to move all
the messages to the Junk mailbox, say No. Next, select Perform
custom actions. Then click the Advanced& button and edit the rule such
that the conditions don&t match any messages. For example, use these two
conditions:
Message is addressed to my Full Name
Message is not addressed to my Full Name
and set it to If all of the following conditions are met. Click
OK to close the sheet. Do not make any further changes to the Junk
Mail preferences.
Go to the Rules section of Mail&s preferences and change the
SpamSieve rule to move the messages to the Junk mailbox instead of
the Spam mailbox.
from Mail&s Message menu and,
when prompted, say that the name of your spam mailbox is Junk.
Go to the Mailbox Behaviors (or Special Mailboxes) tab of the
Mail&s Accounts preferences and select a time interval for Erase
junk messages (or Delete junk messages when). You&ll need to repeat
this for each account.
Note: Even though you are using the Junk mailbox, due to a bug in Mail,
the Erase Junk Mail command may be disabled.
You can set Entourage so that when it quits it will delete all the spam
messages that are older than 7 days (or whichever interval you choose):
Choose Tools ‣ Run Schedule ‣ Edit Schedules.
Click the New button to create a schedule.
Set the name of the schedule to Delete Old Spam, the
When to On Quit, and the Action to Delete Junk
Mail from Junk E-mail (On My Computer).
Click OK to close the dialog.
Outlook 2016
Outlook 2016 does not support schedules.
Outlook 2011
You can set Outlook so that when it quits it will delete all the spam
messages that are older than 7 days (or whichever interval you choose):
Choose Tools ‣ Run Schedule ‣ Edit Schedules&.
Click the + button to create a schedule.
Set the name of the schedule to Delete Old Spam, the When to
On Quit, and the Action to Delete Junk Mail from Junk
E-mail (On My Computer).
Click OK to close the dialog.
See the Automatically delete junk mail older than setting in the
Accounts preferences.
Thunderbird
See the Automatically delete junk mail older than setting in the
Account Settings window.
As described in the
section, you need to tell SpamSieve
about messages that it misclassified so that it can learn from them. Also, the
sooner you correct SpamSieve the better. This presents a problem if you&re going
to be away from your Mac for a while, e.g. if you&re on a trip and using your
iPhone/iPad or Web mail. With the normal setup, you can leave SpamSieve running
on your Mac at home, and it will clean the spam out of your inbox, but aside
from remote-controlling your Mac there&s no way to train SpamSieve.
The drone setup lets you run SpamSieve on one Mac and train it from other
Macs, PCs, or iPhones. This setup requires Apple Mail, , or .
Here&s an outline of how it works:
All the computers check the same IMAP, iCloud, or Exchange account.
One Mac (the drone) downloads all the messages and filters them with
SpamSieve. The other computers (your notebook Mac, your PC at work, your
iPhone, etc.) are not running SpamSieve, yet they get a spam-free inbox. If
you&re using an iPhone, you may want to turn off push e-mail so that the
phone doesn&t notify you about new messages that would be put into the spam
mailbox, anyway.
If you&re sitting at the drone, you can train it normally using the
SpamSieve - Train as Good/Spam menu commands.
If you&re at one of the other computers, you can train it remotely:
If a spam message gets through, move it to the special TrainSpam
mailbox to train the drone. Periodically, the drone will train the
messages in this mailbox as spam and then move them to the spam mailbox.
If a good message ends up in the spam mailbox, move it to the special
TrainGood mailbox to train the drone. Periodically, the drone will
train the messages in this mailbox as good and then move them to the
The Apple Mail drone checks the Train mailboxes whenever a new
message arrives in the inbox. This can even work when your Mac is asleep,
if you&ve enabled . The
MailMate and Outlook drones check the Train mailboxes periodically,
according to a schedule that you set. The Mac needs to be logged into
your account, although you can also use other accounts via .
To set up the spam filtering drone:
Make sure that all the computers are set to connect to your mail
account via IMAP, iCloud, or Exchange.
This optional step will hopefully keep SpamSieve running if there&s a power
failure while you&re away from your drone Mac. Open System Preferences. In
the Users & Groups pane, set Mail or Outlook as a login item for your
account. Under Login Options, enable automatic login. In the Energy
Saver pane, set it to Restart automatically after a power failure.
(This option is not available on all Macs.)
Create two additional mailboxes in each mail account: TrainGood and
TrainSpam.
Note: If you don&t mind (or in fact prefer) having all of your spam go to
one account&s Spam mailbox, you can instead create a single pair of
training mailboxes in that account (and not create a Spam mailbox in
each account). However, this may make it more cumbersome to move messages
into the training mailboxes (e.g. from iOS or Webmail).
Continue following the instructions below for Apple Mail, MailMate, or
This section is a continuation of the
instructions for people using Apple Mail.
If you have a single mail account, follow the normal SpamSieve setup
procedure in the
section, with one change: in Step
2, create the new Spam mailbox in your server account instead of in On
My Mac. You&re now done wit