Download the zipped file. You can run the setup.exe from the zipped file, or you can extract it to a directory and then run it. WinZip users can use the "install" button from within WinZip. The setup program will take care of all installation issues and will create icons so that you can use the program.

Spam Manager is easy to use. First, you have to configure your email accounts, then you need to identify which messages are valid and which should be considered junk.
As the program learns what you consider to be junk, it becomes more effective at filtering out messages automatically.
Spam Manager will work with any POP3 or Hotmail mailbox. (currently it does not work with AOL, Compuserve, or MSN Accounts. You may want to look at aol2pop.com for a solution to work with AOL and compuserve accounts.)

Configuring your email accounts: If you do not have any accounts configured, Spam Manager will take you to the account configuration wizard when it starts. If you need to get back to configuring accounts later on, click on 'Options' on the main menu. After setting up your account, the program will give you some tips on how to use it effectively.

If you wish to configure additional settings, click on the 'Options' selection on the main menu. See the Options Configuration Screen section later in this document.

Keep in mind that in order for Spam Manager to be able to work properly, It must be able to pick up the messages BEFORE your regular email program does. We recommend turning off any automatic download of messages from your regular email program. (Note: Only one program can be checking your mailbox at a time, otherwise you will get a 'Mailbox is Locked' error message on one of the programs)

On the left hand side, you can click on the different categories to see which messages have been accepted, rejected, deleted, etc.
We recommend that you click on 'Unmarked' and work with those messages first. These are the messages that the system did not know what to do with them. For any Junk mail, press the Junk button to indicate that these types of messages should be automatically rejected. For any valid messages, click on the 'Friend' button, and future messages from that email address will be automatically accepted.
The 'Accept' button is used to accept a message, but it will not add the sender's email address to your friend's list. Use this for a one time acceptance of a message.
All the tag buttons are toggle buttons. If you click on Friend, it adds the sender's email address to the friends' list. If you click on the button again on that same message, it will now remove that address from your friends' list.

For safety reasons, a message from a friend cannot be tagged as junk. (You have to remove the sender's email address from your friends list first)

In order to tag all addresses from a specific domain, you can right click on the message and add the domain to either the friends' list or the blacklist. This will add an entry that looks like *@mydomain.com to that list. (Be careful about blacklisting entire domains.) If necessary, you can edit your friends list or blacklists through the options menu selection.

When you are first starting to use the program, we recommend that you check the rejected messages to make sure that no valid messages were accidentally rejected.
As you get more comfortable with using the program, and as the program starts to properly identify junk messages, you can start to skip this step.

Note: If the system detects any attachment with the following extensions, .EXE, .COM, .VBS, .SCR, .PIF, and .BAT, it will automatically tag the message for deletion and label it as a virus. If you have people sending you those types of messages, they really should be zipped up first. Most email viruses come in attachments with those types of extensions.

When you are finished tagging your messages, you can click on the "Remove Deleted" button and this will actually remove all messages that have been tagged for deletion from your server. After you have done this, you can call up your regular email program (the "Launch email App" Button will do this for you) to pick up and read your messages as you normally would.

Default Categories:
When messages are tagged, they are categorized based on several factors:

Friend:	- This message's sender was found in your Friends List.
Accepted:	- You chose to Accept this message. This is a one time acceptance.
Junk:	- This message has been tagged as junk. (See additional categories below for more details).
Restored:	- This message was restored from quarantine.
Virus:	- This message has an attachment with a forbidden extension.
You can also define your own categories in the 'Custom Rules' section under 'Options'. (See the Options Configuration Screen section below).
Additional Categories: (This is visible if you select 'Show why a message was junked' in the options screen.)
Spam:	- This message contains something that was found in one of the filter dictionaries.
Junk:	- You have tagged this message as junk.
Blacklisted:	- This message's sender was found in your list of blacklisted addresses.
DNSBL:	- This message came from a blacklisted server.
URL:	-This message was tagged based on a URL that came from a message previously tagged as junk.

If you wish to configure additional settings, click on the 'Options' selection on the main menu. On this screen, there are some additional options that you can choose. 'Show messages as text' sets the program to display messages in text format as opposed to a Web format. We recommend keeping this setting on. Some Junk mailers will be able to confirm your email address as a valid address if you view their message as a web page, so we recommend using text only.
Unfortunately, you may not be able to see all messages properly with this setting, but you can always override it on a message by message basis.

If you wish to have Spam Manager check your mail on a regular basis, put in the number of minutes that you want the program to use. If you put in a 0, the program will not check your mailbox automatically. The Default setting is to check mail every 5 minutes.

The friends, blacklist, and URL edit buttons are only for use if you want to manually edit those settings. Usually you will not need to do anything with them.

If you want to receive messages relating to the categories listed in the dictionaries, then you need to disable the selected dictionary. (For example, a mortgage broker would want to receive messages relating to mortgages, so they would disable that dictionary.)

AutoDeleting Tagged Messages: If you turn this option on, all messages that are tagged as junk or viruses will be automatically be removed from the server.
We recommend turning on the Quarantine Option if you are going to use this, just in case a deleted message needs to be recovered.

Using Message Quarantine: This option allows all messages that are about to be deleted, to be saved in the Quarantine Folder first.
Warning: Make sure that the email accounts settings are correct under each mail account. This is required to be able to later restore a quarantined message.

The 'Advanced' button allows you to customize the DNSBL Servers or override the default windows email client setting.

The 'Custom Rules' button allows you to define additional rules for accepting or rejecting messages. Custom rules are evaluated before any other settings, so a message that satisfies a rule will override any Friends, Blacklist, or junk mail processing.
You can define a custom category and color to set any messages that satisfy these rules.

If you have finished adding all accounts and setting all your options, click on OK to close the Options window.