Fixing Rackspace 2010 Exchange Spam Filtering

How would you like to suddenly start getting all the SPAM E-mails your quarantine used to catch delivered right to your inbox? That is what happens presently when you upgrade to an Exchange 2010 plan on Rackspace if you don’t utilize the Junk E-Mail Filtering option within Outlook.

The Problem

The problem is two-fold, for starters the Microsoft Outlook Junk filtering is highly un-reliable. Too many messages you want to receive will end up in the junk folder forcing you to have to go find them. Couple that with the changes with Rackspace Exchange 2010 that require you to enable the junk filter or all the messages hit your inbox and you see an obvious problem.

A Solution

After discussing this in depth with Rackspace and hoping they would come up with a better solution, it became evident that they have no plans to change anything for now. In the meantime the best work around is to utilize the flag that they use tip off Outlook that the message is spam is via a simple line they add to the header:

X-Spam-Flag: YES

Instead of enabling the Junk Filter and fighting with it, you can create a custom rule in Outlook to filter these messages to a folder of your determination. In my case I used the Junk E-Mail folder that is essentially disarmed right now (filtering is turned off). You may wish to consult with your favorite/company IT professional before doing this.

Adding the filter

Here is a simple step by step procedure for Outlook 2010 these instructions assume Junk E-Mail filtering is already turned off on Outlook (this article demonstrates how to disable Junk Filtering):

In the Home tab of Outlook click Rules | Create Rule.
Click “Advanced Options”
Scroll down and check the condition “with specific words in the message header”
Click “specific words” and add: “X-Spam-Flag: YES” (minus the quotes) to the search list.
Click next, then check the box next to move it to the specified folder.
Click “specified” under the rule description and select the Junk Email folder.
Click next until you get to the finish rule setup screen, pick a name for the rule and check the box to run it now if you have spam in your inbox already (pictured).