How to Make Sure Hotmail Doesn't Ban Important Mail as Junk

Windows Live Hotmail's spam filtering options are great, and they can send a lot of the spam you'd usually find in your Windows Live Hotmail Inbox to the Junk Mail folder automatically. But the filters are not perfect and might catch an important message now and then by mistake.

As a precaution, you can add known senders to the Safe senders list. Hotmail will never regard mail from a sender on this list as spam. To make sure I'll never miss an issue of the About newsletters I have subscribed I have added "about.com" to the Windows Live Hotmail Safe senders list, for example.

Make Sure Windows Live Hotmail Doesn't Ban Important Mail as Junk

To prevent Hotmail from banning important messages as spam:

• Select Options | More Options... from the Windows Live Hotmail toolbar (or just Options if you use Windows Live Hotmail classic).
• Follow the Safe and blocked senders link under Junk e-mail.
• Click Safe senders.
• Type the email address or domain you want to put on the Safe senders list in the Sender or domain to mark as safe: entry field.
  • To whitelist all About newsletters, for example, type "about.com".
• Click Add to list >>.

If you have subscribed to mailing lists, make sure their messages get through, too.

You can also have Windows Live Hotmail accept only mail from known senders.