Are You Missing Important Emails? Here’s How to Fix It

Make your inbox work for you, not against you

Increasingly, filtering systems are trying to keep spam out of your inbox. Sometimes, they accidentally filter out the e-mails you want to receive. To ensure important emails are not filtered into your ‘junk’ folder, you need to take action.

Unfortunately, it is not always straightforward to do this, and the process often depends on the email provider.

For some, you add the trusted domains to your Safe List. The safe list can be accessed via an ‘Options’ or ‘Settings’ link.

For others, add the trusted domains to the filter’s ‘whitelist’. You may need to search a filter’s help for how to do this — and depending on software/version, they may call a ‘whitelist’, a ‘good list’ or a similar name.

If an important email is filtered to your ‘Spam’ or ‘Junk’ folder, open the message and click on the ‘this is not spam’ link.

If an important email is still being filtered or your email client doesn’t have a ‘whitelist’, try adding the domain or the email’s ‘From’ or ‘Reply-to’ address to your address book or contact list. If this option is not available, try moving the message to your ‘inbox’, forwarding the message to yourself or replying to the email.

If subsequent messages continue to be filtered, call or e-mail your ISP’s tech support and specifically ask how you can be sure to receive all e-mail from your trusted domains. Follow their instructions for whitelisting.

It’s a shame to have to bother with all this, but unfortunately, a few unscrupulous people make it difficult for those who want to conduct business responsibly on the Internet.

Of course, making sure that you can receive emails from trusted sources is only half the story. If you send emails, there are some things you can do to reduce the chances of your emails being rejected by anti-spam software.

For more information on this, please see How to Ensure Your Emails are Received.