A user trying to use rules to delete spam recently had this problem:

"The messages I want permanently deleted are remaining in the Junk E-mail folder, instead of being deleted upon receipt."

I really wanted to ask him why it's so important that his rules delete spam? What is wrong with letting the junk filter drop them in the Junk E-mail folder and empty it regularly?

If you set up AutoArchive to run on the folder and enable it so it'll delete mail a specified number of days old, Outlook will keep the Junk E-mail folder cleaned out for you. You also just right click on it every now and again and empty it. This is assuming you can ignore the unread message count and bolded folder name. I can, but many people just can not ignore a folder containing unread messages, so they'll toy with rules for hours, trying to delete as much spam as possible.

"Not testing the rule by assigning categories or moving the messages to another folder was a big mistake."

Note that the behavior of the above user's rule is correct and this is how Outlook 2003 now works. In Outlook 2003 RTM (Release to Manufacturing), rules run first, before the spam filter, and anyone who had multiple accounts and used rules to move the mail to other folders found the spam was moved too. Because most people felt the spam filter should act on the mail first, Microsoft changed the order so that junk mail is filtered out before rules run on the remaining messages.

Another problem area for many users is the blocked-senders list. Users demand the ability to add domains to the blocked list from the right click menu or they want to select multiple messages and have the senders or their domains added to the blocked list. Once again, I have to ask "Why?" Adding the domain of the latest spammer to send you medicinal emails is not worth the effort. Spammers are always one step ahead of you and will use a new domain tomorrow. Fighting spam like this is a waste of resources.