spartacusfilter. for Outlook Express

Installation and first steps

1. Close any Outlook Express windows that are open.
2. Run the msi file. This will begin the installation process. Simply follow the on-screen instructions. For WinNT, W2K, WinXP you need administrative privileges for initial installation. Every new user (now administrative privileges not necessary any more) who wants to use Spartacus Filter for Outlook Express has to run the installation again.
3. Start Outlook Express again.
4. After installing, you'll see a new toolbar button as well as two additional menu entries. It looks like this:
   
5. When the program is started the first time it will churn through all the mail in the inbox folder, and stores a list of the words used in mails. At this point, it's examining the contents of each email, and gathering data that will be used to analyze new mail as it arrives. This may take several minutes dependent on the size of your inbox. Please note: Your inbox must not contain any spam mails! So do not skip the next step.
6. As you get new or already have existing spam mail in your inbox, use the "Delete Spam" button to move any spam you get into the Spam folder. You can highlight multiple items and move them all at once if you want. The more spam you delete, the better Spartacus is at identifying it. Now you're ready to filter some spam! Whenever new mail is received, Spartacus checks each one and determines whether or not it's spam. If it's spam, it is automatically moved into the "Deleted Items" folder. Otherwise it remains in the Inbox.The probability for detecting spam mails is more than 99% (after training with representative statistic data).
7. While the filter is processing new messages in background the status bar provides information.
   
8. It's a good idea to periodically check the "Deleted Items" folder for real email that was misidentified. That's what a "false positive" is - a real email that is falsely identified as spam. Typically, Spartacus gets very few false positives, less than 0.1 %. Please do the following to move the mail back to the inbox:
   Be sure the mail in "Deleted Items" is read (not marked as "Unread").
   Move it back to the inbox.
   As of version 1.2.7: Confirm the displayed message box asking you whether it is inadvertently as spam misidentified real mail with "Yes". Vice versa you should confirm the message box for all other mails that you want to move / drag and drop from outside into the inbox with "No".

Further configuration and optimization

• There is a White List that will be used - your address book or contacts respectively. This is pretty self-explanatory.
• If you want to increase the detection of small mails with a weblink you can turn on follow-up of weblinks. Set in the options of Spartacus the value for Http-Scan-Timeout above 0 (3 seconds is recommended). The performance of processing might be slightly slower.
• Additionally on Windows 2000 and XP you can increase the detection rate by verification of mail senders address via SMTP. SMTP verification is usually not required for best filter performance! Use it therefore only in exceptional cases of low detection rates e.g. at the beginning if few messages exist. Please note that the processing performance of the filter can decrease severely (on average 1s extra per message)!
• Because of a programming interface limitation of Outlook Express Spartacus Filter is not able to archive your identified spam mails in a separate folder. Spam mails can only be moved into the folder "Deleted items". Please ensure Spartacus Filter is backing up deleted spam mails or Outlook Express is not emptying automatically the folder "Deleted items" after shutting down. For that purpose set "Backup deleted Spam Mails" in Tools->Spam Filter Options... or clear the checkbox "Empty messages from the 'Deleted Items' folder on exit" in Tools->Options->Maintenance!
• Spartacus writes a logfile for all spam removal actions. For more information see "Spam filter options" dialog.

Limitations of Spartacus for Microsoft Outlook Express

The Outlook Express programming interface (API) is limited. Therefore the Outlook Express Filter Plugin can't handle a separate Spambox. The Outlook Express Filter Plugin moves all mails identified as Spam into the Deleted Items folder.

Attention: Please ensure Spartacus Filter is backing up deleted spam mails by setting the Option Backup deleted Spam Mails in Tools->Spam Filter Options... !

Neither IMAP nor HTTP mail accounts are currently supported by the Outlook Express Filter Plugin.