SpamSieve Does Not Move Spam to "Spam" Mailbox

I’m a Mac user. System info: Mac Pro (Mid 2010), OS X El Capitan (10.11.5).

I just bought SpamSieve, and:

  1. Quit Mail;
  2. Did a standard installation of the Apple Mail Plug-In per directions in Help 3.1;
  3. Re-launched Mail;
  4. Created a new folder “Spam” in location “On My Mac”;
  5. Added the new SpamSieve rule per Help 3.1;
  6. Eliminated all previous Rules except “Not in my address book,” which I unchecked;
  7. Dragged the SpamSieve rule to the top of the list.

Issues:

  1. When I use the Message > Train as Spam function, Mail DOES NOT MOVE THE MESSAGE TO THE SPAM FILTER. At all. It’s not slow; it doesn’t do it at all.
  2. When I use the Message > Train as Spam function, Mail marks the message as “Junk”!

What the hell? The reason I bought SpamSieve was to create a mailbox for things that are obvious malware, that I and any human can recognize as such, but that Mail cannot because of its inherent stupidity. So tell me again: What is the value SpamSieve is adding if I have to go into the Junk folder, mark the obvious malware as Spam, and then watch it continue to sit in the Junk folder? Please tell me A) What I’m doing wrong, and B) Where the documentation shows how not to do it.

Do you mean that it doesn’t move to the Spam mailbox when you train it or that future spam messages don’t move automatically?

That is normal. SpamSieve marks known and suspected spam messages as junk in Mail to protect you from Web bugs and to prevent Mail’s own junk filter from getting confused.

With the normal setup, SpamSieve filters new messages that arrive in the inbox. If you have a server spam filter that is putting messages in the Junk mailbox, those messages bypass Apple Mail rules, including SpamSieve. They are already caught as spam (by the server) and thus do not need to be trained for SpamSieve.

If you don’t like the server filter putting messages in the Junk mailbox, the best solution is to turn it off. Then the messages will go to the inbox and be filtered by SpamSieve.

If you can’t turn off the server filter, there is a script you can use to have SpamSieve filter the Junk mailbox.