In the past we have said that it would be nice if Gmail offered the option to create a white list for messages from certain email addresses that should never be sent to the spam folder. We can’t really complain about Gmail’s spam filter because it does a fantastic job catching actual spam, but on occasion it will manage to take a “good” message and put it in the spam folder. If you’re expecting a message, it’s especially frustrating when it gets caught and you don’t think to go check the spam folder. Those days are over because now Gmail has added a new filter option to “Never send it to Spam.”
Here’s how you create a filter with the option to “Never send it to spam”:
- Log in to your Gmail account and click “settings”
- Next, click the “filters” tab and click “Create a new filter”
- Specify the criteria that will be used for determining what to do with a message like who it’s from, who it’s to, the subject, etc. and then click “Next Step”
- Choose your action – this is where you can select the option to never send it to spam. For example, in step three I entered Ryan’s email address in the “from field” and then chose my action to be “Never send it to Spam.” Anytime I receive a message from Ryan, I am now guaranteed that it will never end-up in my spam folder.
As Google Blogoscoped points out, we’re not quite sure how long this has been around but it’s definitely something we haven’t noticed before.
this seems to work however you CANNOT put multiple addresses into the “from” field, you have to create a separate filter for each address you want to “whitelist”
- why can’t they just offer a real list? what’s their problem?
- and why can’t they offer an “exclusive whitelist” as well, it’s MY business if I want to make myself hard to contact, not their business.