Problem Fixed: MacOSX Mail Train-Spam not coloring, not moving, but beachballing some

I’ve been vexed by this one for a few months now and figured I’d share what I did to fix it in case someone else is in the same situation.

I did a computer upgrade and a lot of software upgrade at the same time so I didn’t quite figure out what it was that I needed to do until just today.

This solution is relevant for the following technology:

  • Mac
  • Apple Mail (I didn’t have any other plugins etc)
  • SpamSieve (previously installed, had it for years)

Description of non-optimal behavior:

SpamSieve would filter inbound messages normally, capturing most of them.
SpamSieve would miss a couple though, which is normal, and when I attempted to manually “Train Bad” the beach ball would spin but the message:

  • would not change color
  • would not move out of the inbox

Solution:
My user folder is on a separate physical disk from my startup disk for ease in all the things that this makes easier.

However, the permissions on the disk containing the user folder were being ignored. I believe this might have been causing an issue with installing/using SpamSieveHelper which is needed to do the manual training.

Fix: “Get Info” on the volume containing the user folder and uncheck “Ignore ownership on this volume” (will require administrator login).

Result: Back to spam filtering nirvana.