Mail Sends Good Mail to Junk Despite Settings

Question

Mail Sends Good Mail to Junk Despite Settings

I have one iMac running Mojave and another running Big Sur. In both Mail programs, I do have the Not Junk option and I also have Spam Sieve installed. There are certain emails I have marked as Not Junk and as Good in Spam Sieve. Despite that, they are sent to the Junk Mail folder. When I check webmail, I find them in the Inbox, not in spam or junk. Therefore, it has to be a Mail problem. This has been going on for months, despite my redoing these settings constantly. What can be done to get mail to the correct box?

iMac 27″, macOS 10.14

Posted on Aug 11, 2021 3:10 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

BDAqua

Level 10

245,477 points

Aug 12, 2021 5:10 PM in response to Hazel Greenberg

The simple way to cause Spotlight to reindex often works...

Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support

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Answer 2

Aug 11, 2021 5:33 PM in response to BDAqua

I have Mail Rules set up to send certain messages to particular folders, and of course I also use Spam Sieve to create rules for Good mail and Junk mail. But I am unaware of the need for a rule for a good incoming mail that simply needs to stay in the Inbox. Is that what you are implying needs to be done? I have also marked them as not spam at the webmail level.

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Answer 3

BDAqua

Level 10

245,477 points

Aug 12, 2021 2:18 PM in response to Hazel Greenberg

You can reenable the rules then.

Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at startup), does the problem occur in Safe Mode? Could take 10 minutes.

Safe mode attempts to repair Disks & clears lots of caches & loads safe Drivers, & prevents loading of 3rd party extensions, so if Safe Mode works try again in regular boot.

Open Terminal and run each of these...

sudo mdutil -E /

This basically asks for temporary super user status, which is why Terminal may ask you for your password (it may not if you’ve used a sudo command recently or are already logged in as a super user or root. The command asks the unix tool mdutil to reindex the spotlight database for everything on the computer, including external drives, mounted disk images, etc. To re-index only for a specific drive, use the /Volumes path. For example, for an external drive named “MiniMe,” the command would look like this:

sudo mdutil -i on /

Rebuilding a drive index can take a long time, so be prepared to wait whether you do it through the System Preference panel or the command line. A few minutes normally.

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Answer 4

Aug 12, 2021 2:28 PM in response to BDAqua

As far as Safe Mode goes, I have been into it several times recently for other issues, and this Mail problem has been going on for a long time. So the changes Safe Mode makes did nothing to solve this Mail issue.

I am wondering whether something less drastic that doesn't involve Terminal might be useful, i.e., rebuilding Mail.

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