Empty Mailbox List in “Filter spam messages in other mailboxes”

[Tango (Hal Vaughan)]

@Michael_Tsai

You might be running into the macOS bug mentioned here, in which case the workaround is to enable the Filter spam messages in other mailboxes option and add the inboxes to the Select Mailboxes to Filter… sheet. Then SpamSieve will check the inboxes itself, to filter them without relying on the Mail extension.

I had that checked and had a lot of mailboxes and folders checked. After seeing this, I went back to that section in the SpamSieve settings (Apple Mail) and made sure that was checked (“Filter spam messages in other mailboxes”) and I clicked to check on the mailboxes I wanted filtered. I got an error message and clicked “Okay” by habit, and there was no list visible at all. Then I thought, “That error message was useful!” so I clicked again, got it again, clicked by habit before I knew what I was doing (oops!), and still got an empty nothing in that box it brought up.

But, this time, on the third try, my list came up - and nothing was checked. Odd, since I had checked a lot of stuff in it. I’m guessing that the list was somehow malformed and parsed wrong or something like that and that forced a reset or made SpamSieve regenerate all the things I can check.

I also notice, in this new list, I have other things I can check - like all the categories in my Notes app!

I’ve checked off inboxes and the “Filter Now” button changed to a ghosted “Filtering…” for a while and I think it did remove stuff from my inboxes.

I was finished there - last paragraph above, but then, after I posted, I went back to my SpamSieve Settings window, that was still open, and checked my mailbox list. Here’s the window at first:

And then I click “Select Mailboxes to filter” and my list of mailboxes is gone again (no error, just gone):

I haven’t done anything unusual with file and directory settings or security.

Tried it again and it’s there now. Don’t know if this is indicating a problem or if it can just take time for the list to show up.

[Michael_Tsai]

@Tango

But, this time, on the third try, my list came up - and nothing was checked. Odd, since I had checked a lot of stuff in it.

I haven’t seen this before, but it’s possible that if Mail for some reason told SpamSieve that the mailboxes no longer existed, SpamSieve would not show them in the list, and then if you clicked OK it would save that they were unchecked. If you use the Save Diagnostic Report command in the Help menu and send me the report file, as described here, I can try to look into what may have happened.

@Tango

And then I click “Select Mailboxes to filter” and my list of mailboxes is gone again (no error, just gone):

In the top-right next to Messages, there is a progress indicator that will spin while it’s loading the mailbox list from Mail. You can also see that it hasn’t loaded yet because it doesn’t let you click OK.

[Tango (Hal Vaughan)]

@Michael_Tsai

I haven’t seen this before, but it’s possible that if Mail for some reason told SpamSieve that the mailboxes no longer existed, SpamSieve would not show them in the list, and then if you clicked OK it would save that they were unchecked. If you use the Save Diagnostic Report command in the Help menu and send me the report file, as described here, I can try to look into what may have happened.

I did set up new mailboxes on my new system - there are a lot of serious problems with transferring a number of POP email boxes, especially with a lot of folders in the structure. I may have named the new mailboxes differently from the old system, so it might have been trying to write to or use mailboxes that it expected to be there (from the data on the old system that I copied over).

It seems to be working now, it just takes time for the folders to show up. I have a LOT of folders I’ve set up for filtering so I can find emails easily - and leave stuff in lower priority folders until I have time to read them. Maybe it takes a bit of time for it to scan all the folders.

What seems odd is that my folders in Notes also show up under “Notes.”

Now that it’s behaving, will a diagnostic report give you useful information?

Oh - I mentioned that transferring the Mail app is a major pain. There are a lot of times when using MIgration Assistant for an upgrade won’t work or can’t be used. I suspect that for a company with developers that are already familiar with Apple Mail’s structure and organization, it might not be hard to write a program that copies all the emails AND folder structure and other information used by Mail to a new system. I don’t know how much of a market there would be for it, but I know it was available, I’d have bought it.

[Michael_Tsai]

@Tango

I may have named the new mailboxes differently from the old system, so it might have been trying to write to or use mailboxes that it expected to be there (from the data on the old system that I copied over).

If it can’t find a mailbox that had been previously deleted, it will just skip it.

@Tango

What seems odd is that my folders in Notes also show up under “Notes.”

Older versions of the Apple Notes app use mailboxes for storage. I think maybe it still does this if you haven’t selected the option to upgrade to the new Notes system. Or maybe it leaves the old mailboxes in place afterwards.

@Tango

Now that it’s behaving, will a diagnostic report give you useful information?

Yes, possibly.

[Tango (Hal Vaughan)]

It’s working - I had it leave spam marked unread so I could quickly look and see if new spam was being caught. It is. I’ll be sure it’s behaving tomorrow, as more comes in.

Is there a way to dump all spam into one junk folder instead of one folder for each account?

@Michael_Tsai

Older versions of the Apple Notes app use mailboxes for storage. I think maybe it still does this if you haven’t selected the option to upgrade to the new Notes system. Or maybe it leaves the old mailboxes in place afterwards.

I think I am upgraded, so it must leave them.

@Michael_Tsai

@Tango

Now that it’s behaving, will a diagnostic report give you useful information?

Yes, possibly.

Okay. I will get them to you. It may take a day or two. I’m still dealing with the upgrade issues moving from one system to another - and fixing a major screw up that messed up my work space, so I’m trying to handle a number of things at once and have to get the things that make my new setup functional first. I’ll get those logs to you as soon as I can.

[Michael_Tsai]

@Tango

Is there a way to dump all spam into one junk folder instead of one folder for each account?

Yes, you can set up the All Junk mailbox.