Rules in Entourage 2008 after upgrade

First, let me start by saying that spamsieve is an excellent application that I have widely recommended to my colleagues - you can’t use email without it.

After upgrading to Entourage 2008, spamsieve continues to filter spam successfully but none of my other 100+ rules are being enforced. No settings were manually changed, and I double checked to ensure the settings in the first two rules were still the same. I know with older versions of entourage there was an issue with rules that required a work around - but from what I have read this should not be the case on 08.

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance. Ben

I’m not seeing that problem with Entourage 2008. Are you using POP or IMAP rules? Do the rules work if you use Message > Apply Rule > All Rules? Could you post some screenshots of your SpamSieve rules and the rule list window?

The spamsieve rules are posted at the top of my rules list, where they have lived for several years unchanged. I tried moving them to the bottom to no avail. Screen shots attached.

All my mail accounts are POP.

I just noticed that two of my rules do work (out of approx 100) regardless of whether spamsieve rules are enabled or not. The rest do not. Perhaps there is a flaw in entourage with handling large rules lists? The two that do work do so consistently, the rest do not. These two work automatically and are they only two that work if manually applied as well (to answer your question).

Normally I recommend putting the SpamSieve rules at the top of the list, so that SpamSieve can filter all of your messages. However, moving them to the bottom of the list can help determine whether the SpamSieve rules are interfering with your other rules. In this case, since moving them to the bottom does not cause Entourage to apply your other rules, that shows that the SpamSieve rules weren’t interfering in the first place.

If the other rules don’t even work when manually applied, that sounds like either a bug in Entourage or perhaps some kind of corruption in your database. I suggest that you contact Microsoft.

Thanks for your quick response Michael.

For the sake of other spamsiever users who may encounter a similar issue, I have just been told by a colleague who upgraded to 2008 last week that manually deactivating and reactivating each rule will address this problem. I can confirm that it does, in a most byzantine manner unfortunately.

I experienced the same issue. None of the rules worked until I deactivated and reactivated them.

I did notice that I can no longer apply “Train As Spam” to a single message. The SpamSieve scripts appeared in the context menu when right-clicking on a message in Entourage 2004. That no longer occurs in Entourage 2008.

Any thoughts?

I found the reason for the problem and a feasible solution…

Reason:
“Running Automator workflows and AppleScripts from the Office script menu is not currently supported under Mac OS X v10.5 (Leopard).” That’s a quote from the online Entourage 2008 documentation.

Solution:

  1. Create a inactive rule in Entourage as per the attached picture called “Train Spam”
  2. When you want to train SpamSieve on a particular email (or set of email), simply right-click and select “Apply Rule > Train Spam”

Hope this helps! :wink:

It’s working fine for me. Please describe what you mean by “can no longer apply.”

Microsoft made a change in Entourage 2008 so that scripts no longer appear in the contextual menu. So you’ll need to use the Scripts menu in the menu bar or the keyboard shortcuts.

Correct. It is no longer available in the context menu. I do see it available in the Scripts menu and theoretically could be executed via a keystroke. Neither of those options worked for me. Apparently, according to Entourage 2008 documentation, these options don’t work in Leopard; hence, the work-around I provided. Are you running Leopard?

I see that, although it’s not clear to me that this is meant to refer to the contextual menu.

Yes, this is certainly an effective workaround to get the training commands back into the contextual menu.

I’m running 10.5.1 with the final pre-release version (beta 8) of Entourage. The help includes the note that you quoted about Leopard compatibility. However, both the menu items and the keyboard shortcuts in the Scripts menu work. I’ve been following the Entourage mailing list and have not seen anyone mention problems with the Scripts menu. Also, I know that many SpamSieve users have already updated to Entourage 2008, and none have mentioned such a problem. So this is a mystery…

Agreed…very strange. Thanks for the info, though.

I’m running 10.5.1 with Entourage 12.0.0 (071130)

I don’t mean to hijack the thread, but I was just wondering if there’s a “best practice” upgrade procedure vis-à-vis SpamSieve when moving from Entourage 2004 to Entourage 2008. I’m using SpamSieve v.2.6.6 and Mac OS X 10.5.2.

For instance, there seemed to be some confusion whether the script menu items will continue to work under Leopard. Last month I started receiving a new barrage of spam, and almost every day one slips through the cracks. I had been training SpamSieve with the “Train Spam” menubar item, and I want to be sure it continues to work.

Michael, it might even be worthwhile to add an item to the support hierarchy on this site describing how best to upgrade your email program, as you do with how to upgrade SpamSieve itself.

Many thanks for any help.

If you simply install Entourage 2008, it will update your Entourage database and preserve the SpamSieve rules and scripts. There’s nothing special that you need to do.

Yes, they work fine.

Good to know. Thanks for your speedy reply.