TY ALL - I think I will start with the blacklist whitelist and then if I turn out to have a problem with whitelisted people sending me very much unwanted mail I can address that issue with each one individually. For example a very nice lady on my contact list got her email hacked and I got an unwanted MLM solicitation. I may also have to go with something like the suggested bayesian filter. I thought PM had one of those and I thought I was using it.

 Anyway PM is a nice program even if it is very complicated but there is no question in my mind that this board is PM's best feature. This board is as helpful with PM as my tax pro bulletin boards are to me in business. 

My goal is to have NO UNWANTED MESSAGES EVER IN INBOX and I do understand that doing this is probably impossible without regularly having to extract wanted messages from the Junk or Suspicious folder. I still find that no matter what the subject or sender mail goes to my inbox unless I have previously received and junked mail from that address. What can I do to get more bad stuff in Junk or Suspicious and what questions do you need me to answer first? If you ask for information please tell me in language a first grader would understand how to get your answer.

 I would ideally like to make things really simple for PMail.

1. It is junk no matter who the sender is if the subject mentions "Drug" "Pharmacy"  "Med" or any body part or "Money" or "work from home" or contains a word that is not in a standard dictionary. (For example if my Mother sent me an email with one of the offending subjects I would want that message to go to junk but I would check junk every day and probably retrieve Mom's offensive message.)

2. If mail passes rule one then it is junk still unless the sender is in my addressbook or on my list of people from whom I want graphics shown without manual intervention.

 My end state goal is to get in my inbox absolutely only mail I want and I'm quite prepared to fish ten or twenty wanted messages a day out of Junk or Suspicious Mail and I won't always or even usually want PM to "learn" that its decision to junk this message was an error. 

 TY for all replies. Once I know for sure how much of what I want PMail can't currently do I can post in the suggestions forum new asked for capabilities. I do not want to post there only to be told that it already does something in particular.

Presumably you have worked through the options available to you from within Pmail. If you are still having problems after that have a look at POPFile, an effective Bayesian filtering system.

Any filtering and actions may catch spam messages and do something with them but no software can prevent you from receiving anything. Only filtering and action by the mail server can eliminate it *before* it is directed to your account. Some servers are better than others and some, depending on settings, deliver any and all mail received.

Once an internet email address has been added to the spammer's lists it is hardly ever deleted and even so the old lists still exist and are   promulgated and shared and even published on cdroms available. If your address that is affected has ever been used with an online service, published on any web page, or used on any of several;l public mail servers or used with any NNTP newsgroup posting you can just about it has been harvested by spammers  one or more times.

Both filtering rules, Spamhalter and Content Control can only deal with what you receive; but not with anything before you receive it on the mail server. Bayesian programs are very powerful but they must have prior experience to base decisions on so when something new and different is received they must be trained either manually or automatic by settings. 

Why don't you consider solely a Whitelist/Blacklist protocol.

Disable Spamhalter.
Enable the default "Basic Spam Detection" content control definition.
General: [x] Only messages... Internet
Exceptions:
Whitelist - everyone in your address book and the list of people from whom you want graphics shown
Blacklist - all (*)
Action - Move to your Junk Mail folder
Don't be concerned with Tests, Weights, etc. you're using only the Whitelist/Blacklist functionality.