Overview
Here are a few tips for navigating the spam label in your U-M Gmail account.
This document includes how to:
- keep messages you send from being labeled as spam,
- manage the way your incoming mail is sorted,
- see why a message was flagged as spam.
Keep your message out of the spam label
Overview
Are you noticing that some of your messages are being flagged as spam? Google’s spam filters are more aggressive than they have been in the past which has resulted in some messages being marked as spam. Here’s a few tips for keeping your messages out of the spam label.
Use a text-only email signature
Putting items such as links in your email signature increases the chances of it being flagged as spam. Remote images and hidden text can also make your message look suspicious to Google.
Send bulk mail from another account or service
If you publish a newsletter or send a message to many people from your own account, chances are someone receiving that message will mark it as spam without you knowing. If they mark messages from you as spam consistently, other messages you send may also be flagged as spam.
Sending bulk mail from a different account, such as a Shared Account, will isolate your uniqname account from these actions. If your distribution is larger than the sending limits or bandwidth limits allowed, consider using the ITS authenticated SMTP service.
Manage your spam label
Correct wrongly sorted mail
If you find a message that has been accidentally marked as spam, you can select it and click Not Spam in the top toolbar to help ensure that future messages from this sender are not flagged as spam. Additionally, adding colleagues to your Google Contacts can help with mail delivery and prevent this from happening in the future.
Check your spam label regularly
By default, the spam label is hidden within your label list found under More in your left sidebar. A good way to remember to check your spam label is to set it to show only if there are new, unread messages in Spam.
To turn on this setting:
- Click the gear icon(
) in the upper-right corner of your Inbox. - Select Settings.
- Click Labels.
- Under the System labels column, find Spam.
- In the Spam row are the options show, hide, and show if unread. Select show if unread.
- Changes are saved automatically.
Now, anytime a new message is sent to Spam, the label will show up in bold in your label list.
Note: This setting can only be changed on a computer, not a mobile device.
Why was the message marked as spam?
A recipient can open the message and see an explanation in the gray bar near the top of the message that says "Why is this message in spam?" For more information, you can click the question mark icon in the lower right corner of the notice or visit Google's Help Center.