There are few things in email management quite as frustrating as important – even urgent – messages ending up in your junk/spam folder.
With all email platforms, there are a couple of procedures you can follow to minimise this annoyance:
- Find and move a message from the junk/spam folder to your inbox.
- Teach your email platform that messages from a certain address are not junk mail.
Although they are all similar, the methods are slightly different for how to achieve this for each platform. There can also be variations between pc and mobile apps, although the procedures will be almost the same.
Here are your simple step-by-step instructions for how to handle this problem for 5 of the top email platforms. If you use a different one, then the instructions will be similar for yours also.
1. Gmail
In Gmail, scroll down the menu on the left and click ‘v More’ which will reveal more menu options. Here, select ‘Spam’ to see any messages in your junk folder.
Select the message you want to rescue and click ‘Not Spam’ in the menu across the top. This will move your message to your Inbox.
To stop this happening again, open the message once it is in your Inbox.
With the message open, click on the 3 vertical dots at the top right of the screen and select ‘Add [name] to Contacts list’.
2. Outlook
For Microsoft Outlook users, scroll down the menu on the left and select ‘Junk Email’. Right-click on the relevant message to open the sub-menu. Select ‘Junk’, then select ‘Not Junk’.
This will move your message to your Inbox.
When you select ‘Not Junk’ a new box will pop up as shown below. If you want to automatically flag future emails from this sender as not junk email, then tick the ‘Always Trust’ checkbox before clicking OK.
3. Apple Mail
Apple Mail works slightly differently to the others, in that you first must check your settings.
First, open the mail app on your Mac computer, go to the app menu (top left) and select ‘Mail…Preferences’, which will open the preferences panel.
Select the Junk Mail options and make sure ‘Enable junk mail filtering’ is enabled. Next, make sure that the following checkboxes are ticked:
- Sender of message is in my Contacts
- Sender of message is in my Previous Recipients
Now, to move an email out of junk, find it in the Junk Mailbox (click on the left panel). Right-click on the email and select ‘Move to Inbox’.
Once this is done, to train the Mail program for future emails, return to your Inbox and select the message to open it. In the email, click on the sender name for the drop-down box (shown below) and click ‘Add to Contacts’. You may be asked to confirm this by clicking ‘OK‘ or ‘Done’ afterwards.
4. Yahoo
Yahoo mail is very similar to Gmail. First, click ‘Spam’ on the left side menu.
Open the message that is not junk and then click ‘Not Spam’ in the menu across the top. This will move your message to your Inbox.
To stop this sender’s messages going to junk in the future, open the message from your Inbox.
With the message open, hover over the sender name and the contact card will appear. Click on ‘+ Add to contacts’ to ensure the address is recognised by Yahoo next time.
5. AOL
Again, as with Gmail, in AOL, select the ’Spam’ folder, then select the message you want to recover, click the checkbox, and select ‘Not Spam’ from the top menu.
Once the email is safely back in your Inbox, then you can train AOL how to handle subsequent messages.
Open the message (from your Inbox), right-click the name of the sender and select Add Contact from the drop-down menu. You will then be asked to complete a couple more details about the sender before confirming you wish to save.
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