Junk Mail

30 Dec 2019 08:29:31

Drew McFarlane

Whilst using Mail version 11.5 on my 2011 MacBook Air and 2010 MacBook Pro both running High Sierra I am experiencing a recurring problem.

Until a few months ago all emails went straight into my “In Box”, then for no apparent reason some of them were going straight into in the “Junk” folder, the senders names of these are in “Contacts” and “Previous Recipients”.

Since this started I have been continually transferring these into the “In Box”, I was led to believe that, in time, the computers would learn to put these straight into the “In Box” and not into “Junk”. I must add that I haven’t altered any settings to have caused this to happen.

All suggestions gratefully received.

(Yes I have updated my computer but as yet I haven’t set up any email accounts).

Re: Junk Mail

30 Dec 2019 15:02:21

Mick Burrell

You need to mark the mail as "Not Junk" before moving it to InBox. Moving it alone does not do anything towards learning.

Re: Junk Mail

1 Jan 2020 11:28:47

Drew McFarlane

Thank you Mick, I will do as suggested.

Have you any idea how many times must I do this for it to do it by itself?

Re: Junk Mail

1 Jan 2020 11:42:08

Mick Burrell

That's a "how long is a piece of string" question! You know instantly why you regard a particular email as junk but your Mac has to find a common denominator before it can work it out. So for example, you may not want mail from a particular person or it may be the subject that is offending you or indeed, the actual content. Mail has to look at all of these possibilities before being able to decide why mail is considered junk.

Looking at Amazon, if you always "junk" email from Amazon, Mail would learn quite quickly. If however you junk the Subject "these may interest you" but keep the subject "special discount", that's going to take longer (for longer read more junked emails). Finally, if you keep all "special discount" email that applies to fishing gear but junk the rest, it will take even longer - if it ever manages it!

Hope that helps.

Re: Junk Mail

1 Jan 2020 18:10:59

Drew McFarlane

Thank you Mick, Your replys are always appreciated.

Re. your piece of string, “A piece of string is twice as long as half its length”