All Apple Mail Setups
Sometimes SpamSieve may classify a message as spam (as shown in the log),
and change its color in Apple Mail, but the message does not move to the
Junk mailbox; it remains in the inbox.
Here are some ways to fix this:
- Follow the Setting the Junk Mailbox in Apple Mail instructions to
make sure that each mail account has a Junk mailbox and that it’s
stored on the mail server.
- You can test that Mail is able to move the messages by manually
applying SpamSieve. Select one of the messages in the inbox that was
marked as spam and choose Filter Messages from the SpamSieve menu
bar icon. You can check in the Log section of the manual whether
SpamSieve predicted the message to be spam. If it did, but the message
did not move, Mail may be encountering an error when it tries to move
the message. Please see Sending in an Error Report.
- Mail’s database may be damaged. Please see the How can I rebuild Apple
Mail’s database? section of the manual.
Mail Plug-In Setups
- Make sure that your SpamSieve rule in Apple Mail looks like the one
shown in the Setting Up Apple Mail (Plug-In) section of the manual.
If Mail loses track of the Junk mailbox, there may be no mailbox
specified in the rule’s actions, and so Mail will not move the spam
messages.
- You can test that the rule works and that Mail is able to move the
messages by manually applying the SpamSieve rule. Select one of the
messages in the inbox that was marked as spam and choose Apply
Rules from the Message menu. You can check in the Log section of
the manual whether SpamSieve predicted the message to be spam. If it
did, but the message did not move, Mail may be encountering an error
when it tries to move the message. Please see Sending in an Error
Report.
- Sometimes Mail rules will not move messages that were processed
immediately after the Mac woke from sleep. You can work around this
problem by quitting Mail before sleeping your Mac or by setting your
Mac to not go to sleep, as described in the Filtering Spam During
Power Nap instructions. You can also use the
QuitMailWhenMacSleeps esoteric preference to make SpamSieve
automatically quit Mail before the Mac sleeps and launch it when it
wakes.
- A bug in macOS 10.15 through macOS 15, affecting a small number of
customers, can prevent Mail rules from moving messages to certain
mailboxes. Although the server may show them as moved, Mail on the Mac
may also show them colored in the inbox. You can work around this by
ensuring that the rule moves the messages to a mailbox that’s on the
same server. The easiest way to do this is to use Mail’s special
Junk mailbox, as described in Setting the Junk Mailbox in Apple
Mail.
- See whether the problem still occurs if you disable other Mail
plug-ins, as described in the Can other Apple Mail plug-ins cause
problems with SpamSieve? section.