With the recent increase in spam, setting up spam filters has become a critical troubleshooting step. However, most of the filters that are created do little to stop the spam, or are so restrictive they block all e-mail. This step-by-step tutorial will assist you in creating filters that should get rid of the unwanted spam while keeping your important mail in the Inbox.

Step One: Make sure that the mailbox has the preview pane open and right click on the name or address in ''From'' field.

Step Two: This will open the following drop down menu. Choose the Add to Filter Option.

Step Three: This will give a drop down menu allowing you to create a new filter, or modify an existing filter. For this example we will create a new filter.

Step Four: Selecting New Filter will open a new dialogue box where we can create the filter. Notice that the filter is based off the offending e-mail address.

Step Five : Name the Filter. We will use ''Junk''.

Step Six: Spammers change the actual address with each e-mail, so it is impossible to catch spam just using the address as it stands. We will need to change the filter parameters. Select the ''matches exactly'' drop-down menu and switch it to ''contains.''

Step Seven: The key to an effective filter is to broaden the filtered information as much as possible, without being too broad. To accomplish this we need to remove most of the address until the filter only shows the domain. By scrolling over we can see that the domain is total-saving.hotdeal.com.

Sometimes the domain name can change as well, like ''savings.hotdeal.com''. Therefore we would want to delete everything before ''hotdeal.com'' to capture the most spam.

IMPORTANT! Sometimes the base part of the domain is too broad. For example:

We can't filter by ''mail.com'' because that will stop too much mail. In situations like that, use the rest of the domain.

You may also run across some spam that has legitimate domains as well.

In this case filter by the entire e-mail, or simply mark it as spam and do not add it to the filter.

Step Eight: Once we have the filter sufficiently broadened, we need to tell it what to do with the message. The default setting in our webmail is to ''Keep in Inbox''.

Clicking on the dropdown will give the following options. We want to move the messages to Spam. Select ''Move Into Folder.''

This will bring up a ''Browse…'' button.

Select Browse and choose the Spam folder. Click OK.

You should now see a filter that looks like the following:

Click OK to create it.

Congratulations! You have created an effective Spam filter.

Step Nine: Unfortunately, there is probably still more spam to be dealt with. You can use the same process and create a whole new filter for each spam message, or you can consolidate them in the filter you just created.

Once the first filter is created, we can add other criteria onto it using the same process. Once again, right-click on the e-mail address in the preview pane. This time, however, you can see ''Junk'' in the filter list. Select it rather than new filter.

This will open the existing filter, but it will have added the new e-mail address.

Repeat the previous steps to adjust the filter parameters to the new message. You can do this for as many Spam messages as you have. As you add more spam domains into the filter you will start to see them repeating themselves, with variations of the e-mail. If the same domain comes up twice, you do not need to set a second filter, the previous one will catch this message as well.

Step Ten: Once you start seeing the domains repeating, it is a good time to run the filter on the Inbox. To do this click on the ''Preferences'' button along the top of the webmail, then choose ''Filters'' on the left.

From this screen you will see your new ''Junk'' filter listed under Active Filters. This means it is actively scanning incoming messages and moving any spam to the spam folder. But in order to move the spam you already have out of the Inbox you will need to run the filter on the Inbox as well. Select the Junk filter from the list – then click ''Run Filter.''

This will bring up a dialog box asking which folder to run the filter on – choose Inbox and click OK.

Webmail will now run that filter on everything in the Inbox. This may take some time, depending on how much mail you have. Once the filter has completed running it will say how many messages were found and moved. You can now verify that the offending messages have been removed from your Inbox and repeat the filtering process on any stragglers.