OE5 New Rule Glitch

Ok. This has gone on long enough! I need some input on my rules I use in OE. I've had these rules for a long time now, and all of a sudden it's acting weird.

What I have done is this: I created a rule that basically says "if you don't belong in my Inbox then you go to my Spam folder that I created." This is the first rule. All other rules after that put certain addresses into certain folders so I can monitor them better without cluttering up the inbox so much. This rule has been working fine. Until about a month ago. At that time I had one address that refused to go into my Inbox and always finds its way to the Spam folder. A week ago another address found its way into the Spam folder instead of my Inbox. Now it's 3 addresses. Several times I have taken these addresses and deleted them from the rules and then re-added them. No go. They still crawl into the Spam folder. I ran my IE/OE repair twice, so far, and it hasn't seemed to help. I really don't want to undo the whole rule and then re-do it. I have over 50 addresses to play with! Does anyone have any idea what is happening here? It's starting to get pretty frustrating.

Last year I upgraded to 5.5 SP1. Do I have to upgrade to SP2, or, even IE6? I really don't want to. I'm hoping someone is familiar with these rules and can maybe help me figure out what type of GREMLIN is haunting my mail! Any input would be greatly appreciated!

 

Thank you, TonyT. This may be what I am looking for. I will test it and see if this works.

Why is it that any time I try to look for answers in these data bases, I can't seem to find the right one? Every time I can't find the answer, I come here and, lo and behold, someone finds the right link for me! Unreal.

Anyway, will get back to you with results as they happen.

Thanks again.

 

Ok. Back to the ol' drawing board. The fix I tried for the wandering mail didn't work. I checked the option in Modify to STOP PROCESSING MORE RULES and those few addresses are still wandering into the wrong folder. Any more tips out there? Any one else have this same problem recently? I'm going to do some more searching and I hope I come up with a fix. It's starting to ruffle my feathers (or, make that fur!) and it needs to stop!

 

Thanks, Tony, but I don't have another system. I'm almost to a point where I'll just undo ALL of the rules, let it rest a few days, clean my folders, scan and defrag, and then maybe just re-create the rules and see what happens. I might even run the repair tool again. I'll just have to set an afternoon aside to do all this.

Thanks for the input and I'll keep watching to see if anyone else comes up with something else.

 

Finally Fixed!!!

I just couldn't leave this thread unfinished.

After attempting to run repair twice and undoing the rules for my SPAM folder, I was still having wandering mail problems. And then I had some more addresses floating into the Deleted folder, as well. I did some more research on OE rules and had a brain storm! (my poor head!)

Since my mail was crawling into the deleted box and since I had a habit of blocking all spam mail, I decided to remove ALL of my blocked mail rules thinking that maybe there was some confusion there with my regular mail. After deleting OVER 500 pieces of blocked mail, my regular mail is behaving and going where it's supposed to!

I guess my Blocked List was overflowing and it was messing up the regular mail and just needed a cleaning. What a mess! It took me FOREVER to remove all that spam. I guess from now on I will just click DELETE and not bother with the blocked rule. It's just a pain in the YOU KNOW WHAT anyway. I have learned many lessons with spam mail and when I move to Florida and set up cyber house again, I will make sure I use one address for important mail and one for 'signing up with.' This way, hopefully, I'll keep my regular mailbox fairly spam free.

Thanks again, everyone, for your helpful tips and you can now officially call this thread CLOSED!

 

Panda,

If you decide to create more rules, choose "Delete from server ". You will never see it and it won't 'fill up' your computer.

I have only 16 rules created and I see only 4 or 5 spams a week. I can live with that as it allows me to use the big red X, which I thoroughly enjoy as therapy.


Mike

 

Thank you, indutch. I do use the 'delete from server' rule, but I stopped doing that. The main reason is, you just can't keep up with the address changes these companies do. I just click that nice red X and move along my merry way. I even used to send the mail to a few SPAMMER reporting sites, but got tired of copy/pasting all that info they wanted. It's hopeless. You CAN'T stop all the spam just like you can't stop the commercials on TV or the telemarkters or the snail mail ads. You might be able to slow it down, but you can never completely get rid of it. You just live with it. I understand that advertisers have to advertise so we will buy their new and improved products, but, geeeeeeesh, do we have to be constantly bombarded with ads? Sighhhhhhh. And Life Goes On.