To whitelist an email address means to mark it as a safe sender, so that emails sent from that address will be allowed through any spam filters or firewalls that you have set up. This can be useful if you are expecting an important email from someone, but it keeps getting blocked or filtered as spam. By whitelisting the email address, you are telling your email program or service that you trust the sender and that their messages should not be considered spam. On some email systems it can also be called adding to a safe list or a buddy list, or marking as a non-spam.
Here are simple instructions on how to ensure that future emails from hello@3DLearningExperts get delivered straight to your inbox:
FOR GMAIL USERS (DESKTOP/MOBILE DEVICE):
Open the email from the sender you want to whitelist in your inbox.
Drag and drop the email from its current location to the "Primary" tab.
A message will appear asking if you want to do this for all future messages from that sender. Select "Yes."
Please keep in mind that whitelisting an email address in Gmail will ensure that the messages from that sender will no longer be sent to the "Promotions" tab or filtered as spam, but in some cases, the email message could still be directed to the spam folder, if certain keywords in the subject or message body are picked up by Gmail's algorithm as spam. In that case, make sure to check the spam folder regularly and mark those emails as "not spam" so that they will be moved back to your inbox.
On mobile devices, you cannot use the drag-and-drop method to whitelist an email address in the Gmail app. Instead, you can open an email from the sender you want to whitelist and look for the option to "always show images from sender." By selecting this option, future emails from that sender will appear in your inbox and images will be automatically displayed.
FOR APPLE MAIL USERS (OS X and iOS devices):
Open an email from the sender you want to whitelist.
Select the "From" or "Reply-to" field on the email message.
Select the option to "Add to Contacts" or "Add to VIPs". If you choose "Add to VIPs", future emails from that sender will be placed in a special VIP mailbox in the Mail app on iOS devices. This option of adding to VIP's is useful as it separates all the important mail into a special mailbox, so you don't miss any important emails and can easily access them.
It's also worth noting that on Apple devices, you can also configure your Mail app settings to automatically mark incoming message from a particular sender as important.
FOR OUTLOOK USERS:
Open an email from the sender you want to whitelist.
An alert message will appear stating "Parts of this message have been blocked for your safety."
Beneath the alert message, click the link that says "I trust [email protected]. Always show content".
By following these steps, Outlook will mark the sender as a trusted sender, and their emails will no longer be blocked or marked as potentially unsafe. It's also worth noting that in Outlook you can also add a sender to your safe senders list via the settings menu, this will ensure that any future email from that sender will be marked as safe and delivered to your inbox.
