Tips and Tricks to Block Senders in Outlook

Anna from Kerrville, TX writes:

I have so many questions about Outlook I wouldn’t know where to begin. How do you block senders in Outlook? Used to be easy before Outlook. I hate Outlook but seem to be stuck with it in Windows 8. Hotmail people are going to be sorry, sorry…

How To Block Senders In Outlook

If you are tired of receiving spam messages and other “junk” emails in Outlook, there are easy ways to block unwelcome senders. Manually blocking email addresses  and/ or entire domains would be very tedious indeed. However, you can delete all messages from a sender in your Outlook.com Inbox and other folders, and categorize these into a “blocked senders list” by doing the following:

• Opening a message from the sender you want to block in your Outlook.com account.
• Check the message list without opening. If you check more than one message, Outlook allows you to block all their respective senders in one go.
• Click Sweep in the toolbar.
• Then, you can select delete all from the menu that appears.

 

Another way to do this:

• Hover the cursor over the sender’s name in the message list. There will be a context menu that appears. Once you see it, select Delete all.
• Block the future messages by clicking or putting a check in the box.
• Click Delete all.

Outlook.com will move all messages from the address (or addresses) in the current folder (but not in other folders — say, your archiving folder if you are in the Inbox) to the Deleted folder and add the sender or senders to your list of blocked senders.

Blocking Email Address in Outlook.com

To add or put any address or domain name to your Outlook.com’s list of blocked senders without a message from the potential sender at hand, you need to:

Click first the settings gear in your Outlook.com’s tool bar.

After that, select mail settings from the menu that appears.

Go to the Safe and blocked senders link under Preventing junk email and click Blocked senders.

So what happens to the messages sent by these ”Blocked Senders”?

All messages from your blocked senders list will be discarded without notice. Neither you nor the sender will be notified, but the messages will not appear in your Deleted or Junk folders.

Note About Blocking Senders and Domains to Block Spam

Blocking specific senders or domains is not a typical way to stop junk emails. Remember, spam usually comes twice from the same address.

The best way to combat spam messages is to report junk emails that make it to your Outlook.com Inbox. By reporting the junk emails, the spam filters will soon know how to recognize such spam messages and know which messages should be filtered.

~ Heather Buford