HelpWanted said:
My junk email folder is blocked, how do I unblock it? Nothing goes into the
folder automatically or if moved to it. There is a small red circle with a
diagonal line thru it on the folder symbol. Outlook 2007.
Your Junk folder is NOT blocked. If you had actually clicked on that
tree node in the folder list, were you actually blocked from seeing its
list of items? No. The small red circle with diagonal is a prohibition
symbol. It was a bad choice by Microsoft since the diagonaled red
circle usually means "no" or "not" based on the image inside of it, like
for "no smoking", "no cell phones", or "no crosswalk here". The
prohibition symbol means to indicate that the topic icon enclosed within
is prohibited. See examples at:
http://www.cellotape.com/images/prohabition.jpg
http://preview.tinyurl.com/2flm4pf
Using it with junk mail, it would mean "not junk" which is opposite of
what Microsoft intended. With no image, it's just a warning symbol but
without a specific topic. So, I suppose, since the junk folder isn't
exactly "inside" the prohibition symbol that you are being given a
warning about the contents of the folder. Junk e-mail can contain
malware, be for phish or scam sites, or end up luring users into
supporting spam by buying something from the spammers (so those users
are funding the spam effort and are part of the spam problem - spam
would disappear if no one bought anything promoted by spam).
It's just an icon. The entire icon is a folder that includes the
prohibition symbol to warn you regarding its contents. If you had
actually clicked on that tree node, you would have seen that nothing
inside that folder got blocked (as far as listing its contents although
some features may be blocked, like URL links and externally linked
images in HTML-formatted e-mails).
