With all the junk mail running around out there, having a good management system in place is a must. While most ISP’s have some pretty good filters as a first line of defense (check with your ISP for more info), Apple Mail has it’s own built in filtering which must be set up. Here we’ll take a look at enabling it and explore some of the customizable options……

Once Mail is set up, notice that the Junk folder does not automatically appear in the sidebar under Mail’s Trash. Here we have our Inbox selected, but no Junk folder:

To turn on Junk filtering, start by going to the Mail Menu and choosing Preferences:

Next, click on: (1.) the Junk tab, (2.) check “Enable junk mail filtering”, (3.) select  ”Move it to the Junk mailbox” :

Once you click the “Move it to the Junk mailbox” option, a pop up window will appear with the option to move all messages currently marked as junk to the newly created Junk Folder. Go ahead and select the Move option:

Close out of Mail’s Preferences and you’ll now see the Junk Folder in Mail’s Sidebar. At this point, junk filtering is enabled. Now incoming email that Apple Mail marks as junk will be automatically placed into the Junk Folder. If something gets through that is not marked as Junk, simply select it and click the Junk button in the menu bar. If it is not junk, select it and click the Not Junk button in the menu bar.

For most users the built in defaults for Junk filtering are sufficient and nothing further needs to be done. For those who want to explore more options and perhaps customize junk filtering a bit, the following will get you started:

In the Junk Mail Preferences, select:

(1.) “Perform custom actions” and then

(2.) Click the Advanced button:

Here we are offered a virtual unending menu of options:

By experimenting and setting custom rules, you can filter junk in just about any conceivable combination. Just look at all the available options:

You can even change the text color of junk if you wish:

You can always back out of any changes by clicking the Cancel button:

That’s basically it. Setting up and using junk filtering in Apple Mail is a snap. Although junk filtering can get quite complicated, from simply turning the filtering on to customizing it to suit personal needs, this tutorial has hopefully provided enough information to get you started.