8.6   Setting Up Postbox

Note: These instructions apply to Postbox 2.x through 5.x. Postbox 6 and 7 do not currently have direct support for SpamSieve, but you can use it by following the Setting Up Other Mail Clients instructions.

1. Choose Install Postbox Plug-In from SpamSieve’s SpamSieve menu.

2. Launch Postbox. Choose Add-ons from the Tools menu.

3. If you have Postbox 2.5 or later, click on the action (gear) menu in the upper-right corner of the window and choose Install Add-on From File…. If you have Postbox 2.0, click the Install… button in the window that just opened.

4. In the file open panel, find your Downloads folder, select the SpamSieveForPostbox.xpi file, and click Open.

5. Click the Install Now button.

6. Quit Postbox and re-launch it. If you now go to the Tools menu and choose Add-ons you should see the SpamSieve Postbox Plug-In listed there. Next to it will be the version of the plug-in. The current plug-in version is always listed at the bottom of SpamSieve’s about box. You can now delete the SpamSieveForPostbox.xpi file from your desktop.

7. Choose Preferences… from the Postbox menu and click on Accounts. For each of your accounts in the list at the left (plus On My Mac), click on Junk Settings and make sure that:

   • Enable adaptive junk mail controls for this account is checked.
   • Move new junk messages to is checked.
   • Trust junk mail headers set by is unchecked.

   It is generally a good idea to uncheck the items under “Do not mark mail as junk if the sender is in” since these can prevent SpamSieve from filtering out certain spam messages.

8. Choose Preferences… from the Postbox menu and click on Privacy. Make sure that When I mark messages as junk is checked.

9. Now it is time to train SpamSieve:

   • To train SpamSieve with spam messages, select one or more of them and then choose Message ‣ Mark ‣ As Junk, click the bullet in the junk status column of the message list, or press the J key.
   • To train SpamSieve with good messages, select one or more of them and then choose Message ‣ Mark ‣ As Not Junk, click the junk icon in the junk status column of the message list, or press the J key.

   The Do an Initial Training section explains which messages (and how many of them) you should train.

   You can also customize the toolbar to add a Junk/Not Junk button.

   Note: If Postbox already thinks that a message is junk, it may not let you mark it as junk—and likewise for not junk. That’s OK; it is enough to train SpamSieve by marking the messages that are misclassified in Postbox.

SpamSieve will process new mail automatically. If you ever need to manually ask it to sift through a mix of spam and good messages, select the messages and choose Message ‣ Mark ‣ Run Junk Mail Controls.

The above is all you need to know about using SpamSieve with Postbox. The Customization section explains some more advanced setup options.

If you need to troubleshoot SpamSieve and Postbox, see the Checking the Postbox Setup section.