Setting up mail filtering with Outlook 

These instructions are for Microsoft Outlook 98 and Outlook 2000.  Outlook 2002 is similar though we do not have a copy to test with.  Microsoft Outlook 97 is very different (and a really bad mail client -- your on your own with that one).

The feature you will be using in Outlook is the 'Rules Wizard'.   There is also an option for 'Junk Senders' - that is not what you want to use since that only works for a single e-mail address.

IMPORTANT:  The screens below are pictures of what (should) show up on your screen as you configure Outlook.  Print out these instructions if you like so that you can follow along as you configure your machine.  Clicking on the pictures below will not do much of anything :-)

From the main menu pick Tools and Rules Wizard

which will take you to this screen:

Now what we want to do is create a new rule (there may be some existing rules that show up on your screen - you can ignore them).  Click the "New" button to get to this screen:

You want to highlight "check messages when they arrive" (which is the default) - just click "Next" at this point to get to this screen:

Scroll down the list of conditions until you find "With specific words in the subject" and put a checkmark in the box for that rule.  Click on the specific words line in the lower box and you will get this:

Enter [*] in the 'Add new:' box and click Add.  Click OK to get to:

On this screen you get to decide what to do with mail that is marked as spam.  You can do a lot of things with it like move it, put it in deleted items, delete it completely or any number of other things.  I usually move it to a folder I created called spam.  To do that click on the rule "move it to a specified folder" in the top window and then click on specified in the lower folder.  Then you have to specify where you want the message to go:

Click OK and you get to see the finished rule.  Hit finish and you are back to this screen:

That's it - all of your mail that has the subject line [*] will end up wherever you told it to go.