Add a Safe Sender

A safe sender is an email address and domain name that will never be treated as junk, regardless of the content in the email message.  You can add as many safe senders in a group policy list. To add your contacts and other correspondents to the Safe Senders list you will need to confirm to always receive their email messages in your inbox.

Note:

The safe sender list is used to determine safe emails on a per-user level. This allows you to add our domains to each user's safe sender list assuring our emails do not get sent to junk mailbox.

You will require access to create and edit group policy objects.

How to set up a safe sender

1. Create a .txt file that stores a list of safe senders (domains or addresses) each on a new line.

2. Save the .txt file to a file share that is accessible by all clients. For example,

\\FileServer\sharedfiles\

Add the appropriate Office version Administrative Template to group policy:

a. Office 2010 Administrative Template https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=18968

b. Office 2013 Administrative Template https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/download/details.aspx?id=35554

c. Office 2016 / Office 2019 / Office LTSC 2021 Administrative Template https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49030

3. Create a new GPO for customizing Outlook or Office.

4. In the GPO go to User Configuration>Policies>Administrative Templates>Microsoft Office Outlook {{version}} > Options > Preferences > Junk Email.

5. Open Specify path to Safe Senders list. For example, \\FileServer\sharedfiles\safesenderslist.txt

6. Set this policy to enabled and specify that path to the .txt file you saved in Step 2.

7. The above setting tells Outlook where to locate the import file. However, it does not tell Outlook to actually import the file. This is done through a registry key entry. You can add this in the same GPO by navigating to User Configuration > Preferences > Windows Settings > Registry.

8. Right-Click Registry and select New Registry Item.

9. Set the properties to the following:

Action: Update
Hive: HKEY_CURRENT_USER
Key Path:Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\1x.0\Outlook\Options\Mail
Value Name: JunkMailImportLists
Value Type: REG_DWORD
Value Data:1
Base: Decimal

Note: The 1x.0 placeholder represents your version of Outlook (11.0 = Outlook 2003, 12.0 = Outlook 2007, 14.0 = Outlook 2010, 15.0 = Outlook 2013, and 16.0 = Outlook 2016). For example, the key path for outlook 2010 will be: ‘Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\Options\Mail’