OS 10.11: Apple Mail - Discard Spam (23 Jun 2015) Failed to Delete 1of2 Dupicate Spam

SpamSieve properly coded two incoming, apparently duplicate, e-mails as Spam and put them in my Spam Mailbox. I saw them there and, using Fast Scripts, I ran the latest version of the Apple Mail - Discard Spam script. I subsequently found that allthough my Spam Mailbox is now empty, one of those two e-mails was left in my Trash Mailbox and the attachment has what I think are the relevant messages in the Console. (I still have the one that was left in my Trash Mailbox if you need that forwarded to you.)

Is there anything else I should provide?

David

Duplicate SPAM; both moved; one not deleted by script.png

The log shows that the script twice told Mail to delete the message, but that it didn’t. The script was able to detect that the message is still in the trash, but it can’t force Mail to delete it. I’m not sure what else can be done here.

OK; I’ll treat it as a anomaly as all other executions of the script had, before that one instance and since, performed as expected for me, and manually delete the e-mail that was left in the Trash Mailbox.

Are you interested in knowing if this unexpected behavior should reoccur–perhaps, if it does, as “ammunition” in what you may tell Apple about its Mail’s behavior–or not?

Thanks,

David

Yes.

Another instance—this time there was just a single e-mail in my Spam folder that didn’t get deleted; it was left in my Trash after attempts by the script to competely delete it. (Accompanying Console messages in the attachment.)

I still have that e-mail in my Trash. Would you ever want to see any of the actual messages or do you believe the actual message is not relevant to Apple Mail’s problem? If not, I’d no longer keep them in my Trash.

David

Just had the problem, again. This time I had multiple (unread) e-mails in my Spam, ran the script, and just one of them ended up beling left in my Trash. Attached are the similar Console messages that have been presented in each instance.

I’ll hold off any further reporting of this Apple Mail problem unless, again, I’m advised that further reporting is still desired–which I’m happy to do, if useful.

David

Script Unable to Delete 2.png

My guess is that it’s not relevant, so please feel free to delete it. Mail is reporting to the script that the deletion succeeded, and I don’t see any Mail errors reported in the Console, so I’m kind of at a loss for what to do from here.

OK; I’ve deleted the “stragglers” left in my Trash.

Two questions, please:

Does that mean you have seen the problem yourself? (Always a relief to me when a developer can replicate a problem I’m seeing at my end—even if a resolution is not known.)

Perhaps regardless of the answer to that question, do you have any need for any further reports from me of the recurrence of the problem?

Thanks,
David

I don’t think so. A lot of people, including me, were having problems with the old script where sometimes a message would not be deleted. However, since I improved the script so that it automatically retries the deletion, I haven’t seen that problem. In other words, it always works on the second try.

Please try the new version of the script that I just posted. I’m guessing that maybe the problem is that it’s retrying too soon, before your Mac is ready. There is a new pRetryDelay property at the top that you can change to a number of seconds, to experiment with whether waiting longer to retry helps.

Noted.

Please try the new version of the script that I just posted. I’m guessing that maybe the problem is that it’s retrying too soon, before your Mac is ready. There is a new pRetryDelay property at the top that you can change to a number of seconds, to experiment with whether waiting longer to retry helps.

I’ve downloaded and installed that new script–having then changed that new property to “5” [seconds]–as a starter. I’ll advise whether that or some smaller value, other than “0”, seems to eliminate the problem I was experiencing.

Thanks,
David

The 5-second setting has, so far, resolved my problem of some spam not, ultimately, being deleted just by running the script. As the script is a background operation that doesn’t affect anything else I do, I’m not going to bother seeing if any smaller value of the delay would also work as well.

Thanks, again, for keeping the script fully functional.

David