Apple Mail problems

SpamSieve
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1

I have a strange problem with Apple Mail and SpamSieve.

Studio M1 Ultra
Sequoia 15.1
Mail 16.0
SpamSieve 3.0.5

Some background:
I have several email accounts, all IMAP. In addition, I have several “On My Mac” (local) mailboxes where I offload mail once read. Sent/Junk/Trash are set to local folders.

A few OS versions back, Mail changed the way things are handled. I still have the “All Trash,” “All Sent,” “All Drafts” sections. However, I now also have numerous “Trash,” "Drafts, “Sent,” and “Junk” in the “On My Mac” section. Very annoying and I can find no way to get rid of these.

To work around this problem I have created a Smart Folder to aggregate all spam/junk. It uses the “message is in mailbox” for each online and offline folder. This allows my to see and delete all spam in one place.

Now the problem with SpamSieve:
I recently changed settings to use the Mail Extension. This created several additional “Junk” folders in the “On My Mac” section.

SS is sending some messages to these Junk folders. I included them in my Smart Folder criteria, but these messages do not show up in the Smart Folder. Making matters more difficult, since switching to the extension method, SS is marking many previously good messages as spam. Since these messages are getting moved to “Junk” folders far down my sidebar list, they become easy to miss.

Any idea what is going on with these new “Junk” folders created by SpamSieve?

2

The mailboxes were always there, but a few versions back Apple changed the way they are displayed. It used to be that, if you were showing the consolidated/All mailboxes, Mail would hide the per-account ones. Now it shows both, and I don’t think there’s a way to change that.

I recommend using the built-in All Junk mailbox for that.

SpamSieve does not create any Junk mailboxes, and the Junk mailboxes that it uses will have the special junk icon:

The ones under On My Mac probably don’t. Mailboxes can suddenly appear if you go to Mail’s Settings ‣ Accounts ‣ Mailbox Behaviors and change the mapping. For example, if Mailbox A was selected as the Junk Mailbox it will only show up as Junk in Mail’s sidebar. But if you instead select Mailbox B for the Junk Mailbox, suddenly you will see Mailbox A appear in the sidebar. But that doesn’t mean the mailbox was created—it was there the whole time under a different name. And this is not related to SpamSieve, as it doesn’t change that setting.

This also suggests that what happened is that the Mailbox Behaviors mapping changed so that your smart mailbox is no longer in sync with the actual Junk Mailboxes. This will not be a problem if you use All Junk.

Please check whether this is actually happening because of SpamSieve.

3

a few versions back Apple changed the way they are displayed

Yeah. Incredibly annoying. I currently have 34 of these unnecessary mailboxes clogging up my sidebar.

I recommend using the built-in All Junk mailbox for that.

I do use the “All Junk.” The problem is that it now shows different messages than the “smart” folder. I have all the “junk” boxes I can find selected for the Smart Folder, including “All Junk” and the individual folders it points to. However, messages in “All Junk” do not show up in the Smart Folder, and vis a versa.

FYI, I created a new Smart Folder to consolidate Junk mail. It shows the same messages as the old Smart Folder and is missing anything that shows up in the “all Junk” folders.

Please check whether this is actually happening because of SpamSieve.

While it’s probably not happening because of SpamSieve, the problem began when I switched to using SpamSieve as an extension. There is either a wrong setting or I misunderstand how these are supposed to work together. I did follow the setup guide, so I’m not sure what went wrong.

4

With the standard setup, there should not be any spam/junk mailboxes other than the ones that say Junk and have the special junk icon. In this situation, All Junk will automatically show the contents of all the Junk mailboxes. There will be no need for a smart mailbox.

It’s not clear to me whether you are not doing this because you don’t know how or because you are purposely trying to make SpamSieve use local mailboxes while your mail servers’ junk filters use server mailboxes.

The setup for the extension does not ask you to change any of that, but we do recommend that you not select local Junk mailboxes.

5

I appreciate the responses. I am probably doing something wrong and not understanding how best to approach this.

With the standard setup, there should not be any spam/junk mailboxes other than the ones that say Junk and have the special junk icon. In this situation, All Junk will automatically show the contents of all the Junk mailboxes. There will be no need for a smart mailbox.

All my “online” account mailboxes (those not under the “on my Mac” heading) have standard folder icons. Mailboxes “on my Mac” and in “All Junk” have the special icon.

I originally set up a Smart Folder for junk because I wasn’t using the “All Junk” option. Now that I am, items in the Smart Folder and items in the “All Junk” are not the same.

Looking at the more closely, it seems that the Smart Folder is catching spam items on the server, while “all Junk” is catching local items.

It’s not clear to me whether you are not doing this because you don’t know how or because you are purposely trying to make SpamSieve use local mailboxes while your mail servers’ junk filters use server mailboxes.

I have 10 email accounts set up in Mac Mail. Most are on a hosted server with storage quotas. I usually get between 500 and 1,000 spam/junk emails every day. SpamSieve has been a godsend to help manage this.

When I travel, it’s not uncommon to come back to spam folders with a total of 10k+ messages. My legitimate work email often have attachments. I don’t want the heavy spam load to fill up my online email storage quota.

The setup for the extension does not ask you to change any of that, but we do recommend that not select local Junk mailboxes.

I was not aware of that. Perhaps that’s the source of my problem.

I did some further analysis and found a clue. SpamSieve is working and sending messages to the accounts listed in the “All Junk” section. I believe this to be the case because all those messages are colored.

The Smart Folder messages are NOT colored. These are messages from spam folders on the servers. I’m guessing the server is marking these as spam before SS gets a look at them. What’s crazy is that although the Smart Folder is set to include messages in both server and local folders, only the server ones show up.

Bottom line is I would like all spam to show up in one place. Easier to review, delete and manage. Whether “all junk” or a Smart Folder doesn’t matter. Is there a way to do this without switching all junk to server boxes?

6

OK, in that case I think you have the mapping correct, with SpamSieve using local mailboxes and the server filters using server ones. However, this means that there is no way to make the server-cought spams show up in All Junk. You will need the smart mailbox if you want all the spam to appear in one place.

That sounds like a Mail bug, although it works correctly on my Mac when I try it. Have you tried including All Junk in the smart mailbox rather than listing each server spam mailbox separately?