Help Basics

Knockout Spam is designed to stay in the background filtering mail automatically. There are no annoying toolbars added to Outlook.

Two folders are created as Inbox subfolders. The "Spam" folder holds all of the spam messages. The "Unsure" folder holds mail that the filter was unsure how to classify.

To reclassify email messages you can drag them to the proper folder and Knockout Spam will automatically learn from them. The other method is by right Clicking on a message or group of messages and selecting the "learn as spam" or "learn as good" menu options.

Right click email message menu

Learn as Good - learns the selected message(s) as good and moves them to the inbox.
Learn as Spam - learns the selected message(s) as spam and moves them to the spam folder.
Message rank - shows the message header and body of the selected message. It also shows the rankings of words in the message by the Bayesian filter and the overall Bayesian rank so you know why a message was categorized as it was.

Right Click folder menu

Learn Folder as Spam - Trains Knockout spam by learning the entire folder as spam.
Learn Folder as Good - Trains Knockout spam by learning the entire folder as good.
Add all email addresses to contacts - adds all email addresses in the selected folder to your Outlook Contacts.
Process folder - scans the current folder you are highlighting for spam and optionally sorts good email to your "Inbox", unsure email to the "Unsure" folder, and spam to your "Spam" folder.
Empty Spam Folder - If you right click on the spam folder you are given the option to empty the spam folder.

Outlook Options menu: Tools > Options > Knockout Spam Tab > "Settings" button

Settings Menu - contains features and configuration settings for KnockOut Spam.

The settings menu contains 5 main areas.

Setup Wizard - automatically trains the KnockOut Spam based on your email messages.
Advanced Training - pick which folders you want to train KnockOut Spam with.
Scan a Folder - scan a folder for spam and optionally categorize what it finds into the folders: Inbox, Unsure, and Spam.
Adjust Filter Settings - adjust filtering settings in KnockOut Spam to your personal preferences.
Purchase and Register - buy KnockOut Spam and activate your registration code if you have already paid.

Setup Wizard:

Scans your email messages looking for email messages from users you have responded to in the past and makes sure these user's emails always make it to your Inbox.

Once it learns from enough messages to train the filter, it will stop.

This training should make the filter fairly accurate. However, it is a good idea to watch the Unsure and Spam folders closely for the first few weeks and correct it accordingly by moving messages the their proper folders as needed to increase the accuracy of KnockOut Spam.

Advanced Training:

This is the most accurate way to train KnockOut Spam.

Choose the folders you want to train KnockOut Spam on.

You need to select at least one folder containing ALL good messages. A folder with a few hundred messages should be fine. It is not necessary to train with several thousand good messages, accuracy can actually be reduced with very large training libraries.

Optionally, you can choose a folder with a few thousand spam messages. If you do not have many or any spam messages, make sure "Empty the Bayesian dictionary before training starts" is unchecked. We include several thousand spam messages in the default Bayesian dictionary so you do not need to have spam messages to train with.

Scan a Folder:

Scan folders for spam messages and optionally move them to the proper folders. Simply select the folder(s) you want to scan. Decide whether you want the spam messages and good messages that are detected to be moved to the Inbox, Unsure, or Spam folder.

Filter Adjustment:

Make adjustments to some of the filter settings.

The filter adjustment selector allows you to select what Bayesian rank a message needs to receive to be categorized as Good, Unsure, and Spam. You can review the message rank of messages by "right clicking" them and selecting Message Rank from the menu.

You can also decide whether you want all Contacts and users you have sent email to be "whitelisted" and always allowed into your Inbox. This is recommended as it reduces false positives.

Learn from messages that are moved to different folders allows KnockOut Spam to learn from messages that may have been miscategorized that you have not dropped and dragged into their proper folders. This process can be slow if moving several hundred or more messages between folders with drag and drop.

Purchase and Register:

From here you can:

1. Pay for your copy or KnockOut Spam.
2. Activate your registration code if you have already paid.

When you activate your registration code, the name, email address, and code must exactly match what is printed on your registration email.