How to view e-mail Internet headers in Outlook

Like most e-mail programs, Outlook offers a way to display the source text of the e-mail or the SMTP header to clearly identify the origin of the e-mail. The Internet headers can also be used to analyze server delivery and encoding.

If you want to examine the SPAM status in the message header of an e-mail with Outlook, the section “X-Spam-Flag” with the X-Spam-Score value is of interest, you will notice that the X-Spam status is completely missing in the Internet headers, although these are given by Spamassassin.

With open the e-mail and go to File -> Properties.

The X-Spam information is simply truncated by Outlook, if you examine the header with another e-mail client, for example using a webmail application, you’ll find the full header. However, Outlook takes the X-Spam-Flag classification into account and moves the message to the Junk E-mail folder if it is received with X-Spam-Flag: YES, as long as the default setting in the Junk E-mail options has not been changed.

X-Spam header truncated snippet in Outlook:

Authentication results: mta-cu121.middle.org;
	dkim=pass (2048-bit key) header.d=outlook.com header.i=@outlook.com header.b="NDq3pzWF"
X-Spam-Flag: NO
X-Spam Score: 0.501
X-Spam Level:
X-Spam Status: No, score=0.501 tagged_above=-999 required=6.2
	tests=[DKIM_SIGNED=0.1, DKIM_VALID=-0.1, DKIM_VALID_AU=-0.1,
	FREEMAIL_FROM=0.001, HTML_MESSAGE=0.001, MIME_HTML_MOSTLY=0.1,
	RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE=-0.0001, SPF_HELO_PASS=-0.001, SPF_PASS=-0.001,
	SUBJ_ALL_CAPS=0.5, TVD_SPACE_RATIO=0.001]
	autolearn=no autolearn_force=no
Received: from mta-cu121.middle.org ([127.0.0.1])
	by localhost (mta-cu121.middle.org [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024)
	with ESMTP id xiFVOnehSqeY for <john@foo.com>;
	Tue, 10 Jan 2023 15:41:15 +0100 (CET)