Hi Folks,

my name is Tom, and I have spam . . .
. . so say we all . . eh?

I use (2) Outlooks - one as part of Office, and the web-app as it shows up 'built-in' in Win11.
used to be OutlookExpress?

I use "Rules" to eliminate a lot of spam.
mid-2025 I made the spammer's hit list and was getting 100+ spams per day.
that email account was basically useless.

as best I can interpret the email header data, the spammers sent one email to a hotmail account, which forwarded the email to bunches of hotmail addresses, one/or more of which accounts forwarded their spam to even more accounts.


apparently... MS caught on to that scheme and killed it....
like,,, if MicroSoft will do the work for you, why bother with all the effort to spam thousands . . . ?

did the "close account" thing . . .
in prior years/decades?/versions? closing the account for some period of time... (apparently) produced a system response "no such email account" which most of the intelligent spammers (is there such a thing?) thence deleted my email from their lists.

the "closed account trick" apparently does not work anymore. outwardly the email account remains 'active.'
when I 're-opened' the account after 60+ days ... hundreds of spams had accumulated - from closing to present.
so,,, that trick for getting deleted from spammers' lists, , , no longer working.

which brings me to the issue of Rules.
I get blatant spam from the same "name" but all with different, and totally bogus, email addresses/accounts.
two to 20 emails from the same name, all different email addresses.
but "Rules" From: obviously only looks at the email address.

how does one 'flag for delete' emails from a 'name' but not the email address'?
example: ultra-simple-stupid, but demonstrates the problem....
our high school class 'reunion' group got hacked.
the spammer sends me email from "Jerry xxxx" with a bogus email addressi, weekly.
"Jerry xxxx" is dead. he is not sending anyone/any classmate emails, anymore....
but the spammer - who links porno accounts . . . - does not know that.

but I have been unable to establish a rule:
Delete any email where "Jerry xxxx" in the from line, and stop processing more rules.
the 'rule' seems only to recognize the email sender address - which is bogus and different on every email from "Jerry xxxx" . . .


example of inability to flag&delete:
20+ spams "From: Ozemplic"+ garbage - all with different&bogus sender email addresses.

is there a way to flag&permanently delete emails with specified text in the from line, and not just the <sender@address>

Look at some of the Message Header.
View internet message headers in Outlook - Microsoft Support

Ensure that the Header from line has the format "From: Xxxxx <yyyy.com>". Where "Xxxx" is the Display Name you are looking for.

Create an Outlook "Message Header Includes" Rule
Create rule based on email header - Microsoft Q&A

Use something safe like Assign A Cat for the action. Play with it until you are sure it's working right. Change the Action to Delete.

You may need to use additional Conditions and Exceptions to eliminate any false positives.

thanks for the lead!


I think I tried the Header option, but it didn't work 'as expected' - many of the mega-spams had 'invisible'? bcc lists - or some such... but I'll give it another go.