Installation and first steps

  1. Close any Outlook 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 the installation.
  3. Start Microsoft Outlook again.
  4. After installing, you'll see a new toolbar button
    Toolbar Button
    as well as one additional menu entry. It looks like this:
    Menu
  5. When the program is started the first time it will churn through all the mail (except for mails in public folders). It then 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 when it arrives. This may take several minutes dependent on the number of mails found. After initializing please move all previously identified spam mails into the Spambox using the "Delete Spam" button on the tool bar.
    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 "Spambox" folder. Otherwise it remains in the Inbox. When you identify new spam, again use the "Delete Spam" button to remove them. 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. The probability for detecting spam mails is more than 99%.
  6. It's a good idea to periodically check the Spambox 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 move the mail back to the inbox. The Filter then corrects its statistics.
  7. For Microsoft Outlook 97/98 users: Due to limitations in Microsoft Outlook 97/98 please do not move any SPAM mail with your mouse. Use the button Delete SPAM or the appropriate menu command Actions->Delete SPAM to identify any mails as Spam. Use the menu command Edit->Move Mail to Folder to move any misidentified mail back to your Inbox.

Configuration and optimization

Spartacus shows some information as well as settings in its options dialog.
SpartacusFilter Options Dialog

There is a White List that will be used - your personal address book and contacts. In Exchange Server environment the filter can use the global address book too. This is pretty self-explanatory. Whitelist checking at Exchange Global Address Book is turned off by default due to performance reasons. We recommend to turn it on using Tools->Options->Spartacus. Please note that the processing performance of the filter can decrease severely in large enterprise networks especially (up to 1sec extra per message)!

If you want to increase the detection of small mails with a weblink you can turn on the follow-up of weblinks. The performance of processing might be slightly slower.

If you try to move any mails from Spambox to another folder the filter prompts for confirmation. You can disable this behaviour in options. Attention: The filter recognizes all mails outside the Spambox as real mails. In order to delete the spam mail use the default delete button (or delete from menu) while staying in Spambox.

Spartacus writes a logfile for all spam removal actions. For more information see the options dialog.