Disable Gmail / Google Apps spam filtering
by Andrew Dekker on Jan.09, 2009, under How To's
Disable Gmail Spam Filtering
If you are a regular user of both Gmail and a desktop email client, then no doubt you have run (even if you have not realised) into the issue of Gmail catching legitimate email as spam. While this isn’t such a big deal if you are using the web interface, it is a nightmare for users of email clients such as Mail or Outlook – where your junk folder is not normally visible. With the release of Google Apps for businesses, this can become a very very bad thing, when suddenly you start missing critical emails. Whats worse, is that Google doesn’t provide an option to disable spam filtering, even for Google Apps. However, there is a work-around, and while quite silly, its easy as to implement.
- Log into the web interface on Gmail / Google Apps Email
- Click settings in the top right hand corner
- Click the Filters tab in the settings
- Create a new filter
- In the “Has the words” field, enter “is:spam” (without quotations) and click next step
- Ignore the ridiculous and untrue popup message
- Check “Never send to spam”
- You should now see that in your filters if a message is tagged with “is:spam”, then it is never sent to the junk folder
And its done – completely silly, but it works. Now you will never miss an email again (even those hundreds of Viagra ads, so be warned). The only big pain with this is if you are hosting a lot of Google Apps users, you need each user to manually do this, rather than having it system wide.
February 16th, 2009 on 8:03 AM
Top Tip, thanks for sharing !
March 31st, 2009 on 10:57 AM
you have to do the reverse :
if the mail Doesn’t contain “is:spam” (never true)
don’t send it to spam … so there is no mail containing “is:spam” so ALL MAIL DOESN’T CONTAIN “is:spam” , so ALL MAIL WILL BE NOT SENT TO SPAM.
And please specify that the “Never send it to spam” option only appears when you log in with Mozilla Firefox browser.
Thanks.
April 4th, 2009 on 9:51 PM
Thanks for the feedback, however I disagree with what you are saying with regards to the filter. The filters apply after gmail automatically adds is:spam to the emails. ie:
Email comes in
Email is tagged with is:spam
The custom filter finds anything that IS tagged with spam
Tell gmail to never send it to the junk folder
I’ve done this for many businesses including my own and I can guarantee that it stops anything from getting dropped in the spam folder (for confirmation I just checked my online gmail which I never check and there is nothing in the junk folder).
As for the IE issue with showing up the option, this appears to be working now in ie6, ie7, firefox and safari (just a quick test in each). Thank you for the feedback though, I will add it in.
May 16th, 2009 on 7:34 AM
I did this in another way…
In Filters i did this:
from:(*)
Never sent to spam
It works fine to me
Thx, and sorry my poor english.
July 1st, 2009 on 7:32 AM
Thanks – awesome tip!!
August 31st, 2009 on 8:08 AM
How long have you been blogging…your good at it.
August 31st, 2009 on 9:13 PM
Helo,
Why I cannot see the option “Never send to spam”. I’m using mozilla.
Only these options appear:
Skip the Inbox (Archive it)
Star it
Apply the label:
Forward it to:
Delete it
So which one I choose?
Many thank’s
September 30th, 2009 on 3:00 AM
The problem with this is that it trains Gmail’s spam detection system to know that all of these messages are not spam. If you ever want the spam filter back, it won’t be functional since you trained it wrong.