Spamfighter promises a solution for both of these problems. The software, which is available as a free and professional version, fights spam on a system wide level. The software supports Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail and Mozilla Thunderbird. Computer users with one or multiple of those clients configured on their system can make use of the antispam software.

Spamfighter Review

New users need to create a spamfighter account right in the application after installation. All they need to supply is an email address and password.

The application always starts in the Overview window which displays information and statistics. Among them the number of processed emails, the emails that have been blocked by Spamfighter or by the user, the time saved and the spam ratio. Community statistics are displayed as well, they currently read 45 billion processed emails of which more than 37 billion were spam, that’s a ratio of 85%.

Spamfighter taps right into all compatible email clients that are configured on the system. We could not get the program to work with the latest Mozilla Thunderbird 3.3 alpha, but that’s understandable since it is not officially supported. Spamfighter did install correctly into Outlook 2010 which was installed as part of Microsoft Office 2010. It has to be noted that Spamfighter can not process IMAP accounts.

The controls in the email client can be used to block or unblock emails among other things. Spamfighter will automatically create a new spamfighter folder in the email client where all emails that have been identified as spam are stored in. It is possible to unlock emails from there with the unblock button, or move regular emails into the spam folder with the block button. Emails in the spam folder can be accessed normally. All spam that is manually blocked is reported to the Spamfighter community so that all community members benefit from spam reports by members.

Additional controls are accessible under the more button.

Here it is possible to blacklist or whitelist domains or email addresses. Whitelisting means that emails will never be identified as spam, blacklisting the opposite of that.

The spam folder can be changed in the main program. Here it is furthermore possible to select if spam mails should be flagged as read or unread when moved, and whether Spamfighter should rescan the folder on startup which will rescan all unread emails that are stored in selected folders of the email client.

Filters can be edited in the main program as well. Here it is possible to add entries to blacklists and whitelists, or import lists from comma separated data files or compatible email clients.

Another interesting option is language recognition. Here it is possible to reject emails based on their language. Say you are from the United States and only receive emails in English. You could then select to only receive email messages in English which would automatically flag emails in different languages as spam. The other option available is to block emails from select languages only. It pretty much works the same way, the difference is that you will receive emails in all languages but the ones that you have selected to reject.

Spamfigther Verdict

Spamfighter is an excellent program for computer users who run at least one of the supported desktop email clients. Its core features are the cloud based approach to identifying new spam messages and the filtering system, especially the language filter.

The program is easy to setup and use as it integrates automatically with supported email clients. Experienced computer users will find the whitelisting and blacklisting of email addresses and domains useful, inexperienced users that it works very well right of the box.

Spamfighter Giveaway

We have ten licenses to give away. Please let us know about your current antispam setup for a chance to win a license.

That’s why several email programs have added features to automatically discover most of the settings, so that the user only needs to enter the email address and password to add an account to the client.

CodeTwo Outlook AutoConfig adds automatic configuration options to Microsoft Office Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail and Windows Live Mail.

To add an email account to one of the supported email programs launch CodeTwo Outlook AutoConfig and enter the email address of the new account and the mail client you want it to be added to (those are auto detected and only selectable if installed). It is furthermore possible to add a display name, which will be shown to contacts when sending emails.

The configuration is only compatible with a set of providers they have added to their database. That’s different to how Thunderbird handles the look up of email servers. The program will inform the user if the email provider is not known, which means that the account has to be configured manually in the email client.

If the email provider is identified correctly, the email account is created. and CodeTwo Outlook AutoConfig can be closed afterwards. The new email account is shown in the selected email program. A prompt is displayed at first account usage to enter the account password. Entering that completes the account setup, which can from that moment on be used just like any other account in Outlook or Windows Mail.

There is one exception to this process. The email program has to have been opened at least once before the account creation. Users who never have opened the email program before need to open it once, ignore all the notifications and close it again, before they can make use of CodeTwo Outlook AutoConfig to add email accounts.

The portable software works well with popular email providers such as Gmail, but not at all with custom hosted solutions. CodeTwo Outlook AutoConfig is compatible with all versions of Microsoft Windows from Windows 98 to the latest and greatest Windows 7.

Windows Live Mail users who work with the messaging program on a day to day basis might have noticed that it is not possible to minimize the program to the system tray. Clicking the minimize button in Windows Live Mail simply replaces the program window with an active icon in the Windows Taskbar.

Some users might prefer to have the software minimized in the system tray instead. This can be done with the portable software Windows Mail Minimizer.

Windows Mail Minimizer adds its icon to the Windows system tray upon startup. A right-click on the icon displays a context menu with options to hide the Windows Live Mail window which places it in the system tray. The context menu offers additional shortcuts to writing a new email and sending or receiving emails.

Windows Live Mail will still display notifications whenever new messages arrive in the mailbox.

Windows Mail Minimizer can be downloaded from the developer’s homepage. The program is compatible with most 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows.

Update: As reader Shatimi suggested it is also possible to minimize Windows Live Mail without a third party tool. All that needs to be done is to run Windows Live Mail in Windows Vista compatibility mode and right-click the system tray icon once the minimize button has been pressed to select Hide window when minimized from the menu.

Update 2: The developer website is no longer available, and it is likely that the application is no longer maintained or updated. You can use the suggestion posted above instead which should also work under Windows 7. We have uploaded the latest version of Windows Live Mail Minimizer to our servers: Windows Live Mail Minimizer (12)

Windows Mail Saver has been designed as a backup and restoration utility for Windows Mail. The free software program can backup and restore various components and information including email messages with attachments, the Windows address book, mail and news accounts that are configured in the mail client, custom signatures, settings, favorites and RSS feeds.

Windows Mail Saver refuses to install on operating systems newer than Windows Vista. This can be circumvented by running it in Vista compatibility mode.

The backup and restore options are displayed in the left sidebar of the program after installation. It is possible to add or remove components that should be included in the backup. Additional options include the selection of the compression level and password protection to protect the backup from unauthorized access.

The restore option requires a previously backed up file and offers the option to select or deselect the data that should be restored.

Windows Mail Saver has a rather annoying animated header banner that is displayed all the time during program usage. It should not be that much of a problem as it does not take longer than a few minutes to initiate the backup process but it is annoying nevertheless.

The Windows Mail backup software can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

So i started by burning all relevant files to a DVD. The relevant files were all the Outlook .dbx files that I was able to find in Documents & Settings. To be precise the correct path is \Local Settings\Application Data\Identities… It’s a hidden folder so make sure that one is revealed to you. My thoughts were that it would surely be only a matter of seconds to import those dbx files into Windows Mail and be on my way home.

Unfortunately though Windows Mail behaves a little bit erratic when it comes to importing mails from Outlook Express. I suppose it behaves the same way when importing mails from Outlook. Whenever i tried to import the email by pointing Windows Mail to the folder the mail was saved in it automatically added a second Outlook Express folder in the path.

Selecting e:\outlook express as the path would lead to e:\outlook express\outlook express as the import path. Now I tried to select e:\ only in the hope that this would solve the problem but surprisingly though it did not add the folder outlook express whenever I tried that.

Here is the trick that worked. I created a new folder in outlook express, named it outlook express and did move all the dbx files into that folder. I then pointed the import folder to e:\outlook express, the second outlook express folder was added and the mails were imported just fine.

You start the import by clicking on File > Import > Messages by the way. This way I was able to import dbx files from Outlook Express into Windows Mail without difficulties. I’m not sure why a second folder is added in the path automatically but it surely has to have a reason.

A quick research revealed that Microsoft actually created a Knowledge Base article describing that exact problem. The article suggests patching Windows Mail to resolve the issue. Mails can be deleted after applying the patch to the system.

The problem seems to occur when the stream entries for the messages are inaccessible before Windows Mail deletes the messages from the Outbox. One possibility would be a notebook running out of battery in this exact moment. If you got stuck messages in the outbox of Windows Mail download the patch and delete the messages afterwards. The patch is available for both the 32-bit and 64-bit version of Windows Vista.