2024-11-12

Stop Gmail from sending good emails to spam

I've been using Gmail for years with no issues; now all of the sudden, they've started sending emails from my known, frequent correspondents to spam! 

For the purposes of this article, I'll focus on emails from my virtual assistant (VA) contracting worker's emails, which all come from *@mytasker.com. Since anyone emailing me from MyTasker.com is either working for me or with me on an important project for my company, none of their emails is spam, by definition. More importantly, I never have-- and would never-- mark any of their emails as spam. But lately, Gmail started sending some of their messages to my spam folder.

The only reason I can guess for this is that, in some cases, I don't respond to the emails, but merely read them and then store them in my copious folder system (which Gmail calls "Labels"). However, I still always read them, and they're always important to me. But getting sent to spam is at best, annoying, and at worst, dangerous for my business. What to do?

Googling this problem led to 2 answers. Oddly, the 2nd solution I found is probably the correct solution, so I'll list it first.

1. Just add the sender to your contacts!

If a sender's emails are getting sent to spam, go to any of your recent emails from that sender. In the sender/receiver info, notice that the sender's name is in bold:

Even though it doesn't look like a button, click on the bolded sender name. This will reveal other options, including the little "plus dude" icon, which you can click to add them to your contacts:

2. Create a "filter" for your emails.

This is NOT the best solution, because it does NOT actually stop the emails from getting labeled as spam!

It's crazy to me that this is the first solution I was finding all over the internet, including from Google themselves! (Read the how-to from Google here: "Create rules to filter your emails.")

As I mentioned though, Gmail might still be labeling your messages as spam! With the new "filter rule," it's just that you can force Gmail to send "spam" messages to your "inbox" folder. But, for me, Gmail was still calling the messages "spam," and slapping this annoying banner on every email:

For now, I'm using BOTH methods. But if you're only gonna do one or the other, I'm sure #1 is the "correct" choice. Feel free to reach out to ask for an update if you're experiencing this same issue.

Back to the list of Miscellany