MS Outlook for Business published a tip on how to automatically add individuals to your safe senders list when you send that person an e-mail. You can thereby avoid having the reply e-mail sent to your Outlook Junk Folder where they may never be seen. While you are opting into this Outlook feature you may also proactively add other senders, such as courts or clients, from which you must be confident that you have received all of the e-mails sent. Obviously, you cannot afford to miss critical notices or client communications. The importance of receiving e-mail notices from the courts cannot be overstated. There have been a number of occasions were court e-mail notices have been incorrectly intercepted by spam filters, resulting in lawyers not appearing at hearings. This problem has been discussed at ABA Site-tation and Jim Calloway’s Law Practice Tips Blog. The courts have not been sympathetic to the attorneys and the attorneys have faced sanctions. It is important to “white list” important senders to prevent the loss of critical e-mails.
Within Outlook, you can increase the efficiency of your safe senders list by using a built-in feature that is turned off by default. To turn on this feature do the following:
Go to your Inbox.
Click “Actions”, then “Junk Email”, then “Junk Email Options”
In the dialog box click the “Safe Senders” tab.
Tick the checkbox “Automatically add people I e-mail to the Safe Senders List.”
Click OK.
While in the “Junk Email Options” folder you can also proactively add key “safe senders”.
In the same dialog box click “Add.”
Then in the new dialog box type the e-mail address or domain name you are designating as a safe sender.
Click OK.
