SS very slow

Used spamsieve for a long time with Entourage, switched over the Mail.app a few months ago. Thought I was having server problems as mail downloads very slowly. But, I switched back to Entourage, and the same thing happened, so then I turned off SS and what do you know, mail dumps in very fast into my various accounts in mail.app or Entourage. Turn it back on and it takes ages to evaluate messages. I guess you’ll want to see my log files, just let me know what ones you want.

Thanks.

Are you saying that Mail and Entourage now filter messages slower with SpamSieve than they used to, or that this was always slow?

Which versions of Mac OS X and Entourage are you using?

How is the speed if you select some messages in Entourage, then choose “Message > Apply Rule > SpamSieve - Move If Spam”? Or if you select messages in Mail and choose “Message > Apply Rules”?

Have you tried rebuilding your Entourage database?

Thanks. Yes, they are slower now, worked fine until about three months ago, may have been an update on the OS or SS, not sure, didn’t really keep track of it. I know that when I switched over to Mail from Entourage, it was very slow and I was just thinking that it was my Internet connection.

I haven’t used Entourage again that much as it’s a pain to use two email programs simultaneously.

So, haven’t done that much testing. To answer your question (let’s stick with Mail.app as I prefer to use that). If I turn off the rule in mail, download the mails, then Apply Rules, it crawls. Seems to get stuck sometimes and just wont move. If I have, say, 200 messages I am checking (but often more than that), often it will take 30-40 minutes for SS to go through them. It’s fast just to delete.

I am using Mac OS 10.4.9 on Intel and G4 Macs. Entourage (when I use it) is from Office 2004. I have the problem on all the Macs, not just on the Intel.

Please open the Activity Monitor program and select SpamSieve in the list. Manually apply the rules in Mail (as above). While it’s working (or, better yet, stuck) choose Sample Process from Activity Monitor’s View menu. Also sample Mail. Then save the two sample windows to files and send them to me via e-mail. This will let me see what SpamSieve and Mail are busy doing, and hopefully point to the source of the problem.

Thanks for sending me the sample files. It looks like the slowness is caused by filtering the messages using SpamSieve, but the delay is not caused by the SpamSieve application itself, which is almost entirely idle. In order to filter a message SpamSieve needs to examine the entire message contents. When you apply the SpamSieve rule, Mail is connecting to your IMAP server to retrieve the message, and this is what’s taking a long time. Please try going to Mail’s Accounts preferences and set your account to keep copies of “All messages and their attachments” for offline viewing. Hopefully this will get Mail to download the complete messages before filtering them with SpamSieve.

Thanks, Michael. That is the way I had it set up originally, but then the mail takes ages to download as so many people send me attachments. I have a better than dial-up connection, but not that much better. Some days it’s impossibly slow and there is nothing I can do about it, I have zero other options here in Phuket, Thailand right now. All government controled and “operated”.

But, I don’t remember having this problem with Entourage, and the download settings are just a bit different. Do you think if I set it for “All messages, but omit their attachments” it would be OK? Or, does SpamSieve have to see the attachment as well to work?

Otherwise I guess I will have to implement server-side Spam settings, but I don’t like them as I have limited control over them in my mailbox on my computer, and have to go into webmail to see if I am missing any messages. I run a business, so I would rather have more spam and make sure I get all of messages as some of my clients are not very sophisticated. That is why I loved SpamSieve.

Can I go back to an older version that maybe doesn’t check the whole message, but only, say, the subject line?

Or, do you think that it will work better in Entourage? I have not tested it extensively. Is this a Mail.app problem?

Thanks again.
John

But aren’t you going to download them eventually, anyway? If you let Mail store them, then at least they’ll only be downloaded once.

SpamSieve needs to see the attachments, and I think Mail might download them anyway during filtering.

No, SpamSieve has always worked this way.

It sounds like the problem is that you get too much mail for your slow connection, so I doubt the software would make much difference. You could try connecting via POP; I think it might be a bit more efficient than IMAP.