I would also like to keep this thread active. The problems with the Antispam feature have not yet been resolved for me after much interaction with Norton support. Frankly I am surprised that I am not seeing more posts about this however I am sure I am not alone in this. Here is what has developed since my last post:
I was contacted by Engineering support a few hours after my initial post on the evening of 9/17. After starting a support session, in which the Engineering support rep connected to one of the PC’s with this problem he proceeded to check all the setting in both NIS 2011 and Outlook 2010, just as the other reps had done before him. As this was going on I pointed out to him that I had found the reason for the initial problem of the icons remaining grayed out, even for POP accounts, and was able to get them enabled but Antispam was still not functioning properly. I went on to explain that Outlook initially attempts to retrieve the correct server setting when setting up the first email account. In this case the account, which supported both IMAP and POP3 protocols, was correctly configured as an IMAP account. Since Outlook cannot assign the default data file to an IMAP account an additional Outlook data file was created. Subsequent mail accounts, which were manually set up as POP3 to avoid the auto detection mechanism from creating an IMAP account, created additional Outlook data files. However none were set as the default. That left a default Outlook data file which was empty. The result being the Icons for flagging messages as either spam or not spam were inactive as there was no content in any of the folders in the default data file. In order to get the Icons enabled it was simply a matter of changing the default data file to one of the active POP3 accounts which is easily done from the account settings menu.
The plot thickens –
Now the icons were enabled and messages could be flagged as spam or as not spam from all accounts. The problem now is that regardless of which account messages were flagged from they were moved to the Junk mail folder or the Inbox of the account that was designated as the default data file. Clearly this is not desirable. In reviewing the spam or junk email folder for legitimate messages anything found to be legitimate should be moved back to the inbox for that account when flagged as not spam. I went over this a few time with the Engineering support rep to be sure he was clear about the problem. He told me he would escalate the issue to the development team since the product was new and it needed to be addressed. He assured me I would be contacted once the case was reviewed and a resolution was available.
Yesterday, on 9/17, I was contacted by Norton via voicemail and asked to call back. When I finally got through, since no contact number was provided, to someone who could tell me something about this case he told me that the notes he had said there was a patch applied over the weekend and his instruction were to uninstall the old product and do a fresh install of the latest release. Before proceeding I asked if his notes mentioned what the problem was or if there were release notes with the patch identifying what problems were fixed. He said all that was mentioned was that Norton Antispam was not working. Since he had no knowledge of what the true problem was I made sure that I demonstrated the “before” condition before reinstalling the product so we could determine if this effort helped. I flagged a few messages from different accounts as spam and as expected they were all moved to the Junk email folder of the default data file account. When the same messages were then flagged as not spam they were all moved back to the Inbox of the default data file account. None of them went where they should have. We proceeded to fully uninstall NIS 2011 and re-install a fresh copy. We repeated the same actions of flagging messages as both spam and as not spam and found no change in the way it behaved. No messages in accounts other than the default data file account went were they should have nor did the return to where they came from when the process was reversed. I was then told this was being sent back to the Development team and marked as high priority. I await their reply.
I do recognize that this does not in any way address the fact that Norton Antispam only works on the POP3 level. That was a big disappoint to me and remains a problem … but if I have to knuckle under and use POP3 to get Antispam functioning I will consider it. However I will not be told that I can only have one POP3 account for it to work. This is 2010 for crying out loud, not 1990. How many people who are in a position to use Office 2010 for professional reasons have only one email account that is POP3? I agree that Norton is on a path that will only hurt them if they fail to act on this or even acknowledge any plans to come up to speed with the rest of the world.
I apologize for being so long winded and editorializing but this is more than just a rant. I hope that others who have found they have issue with this may benefit in some way and I hope they will add their voices.
~Skaladar~
Tim_Lopez
