Bill St. Clair

Q: Conversations not grouped by subject in El Capitan mail

I get emails from Fail2Ban on one of the web servers I manage. Each one has a subject of the form "[Fail2Ban] WordPress: banned 45.41.92.66". They're all the same except for the IP address ("45.41.92.66"). Before El Capitan, all the messages with identical subjects, in this case the same IP address, were grouped into a conversation, with a handy dandy counter plainly visible. That made it easy to see which IP addresses were attempting logins so often that I needed to ban them permanently, not just for 10 minutes at a time, as my Fail2Ban is configured to do.

 

El Capitan mail organizes messages by actual conversations, i.e. messages that are responses to an original, but it doesn't group emails with identical subjects that are not actually part of the same conversation. This is likely correct for many email conversations, but it doesn't work for these Fail2Ban messages. I would love to have a preference to select the old way of grouping by only the text in the subject.

Mail, OS X El Capitan (10.11)

Posted on Oct 1, 2015 3:38 AM

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Q: Conversations not grouped by subject in El Capitan mail

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  • by mecarpen,Apple recommended

    mecarpen mecarpen Oct 5, 2015 11:18 AM in response to Bill St. Clair
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Oct 5, 2015 11:18 AM in response to Bill St. Clair

    For those of you who can control the Subject of the incoming Emails to OS X Mail, prefix them with "Re: ".  For example, "Lake House Camera" becomes "Re: Lake House Camera".  When I made this change, my security camera Emails are organized just as they were before the upgrade.

  • by senseysensor,

    senseysensor senseysensor Oct 6, 2015 8:01 AM in response to TechnoCuban
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 6, 2015 8:01 AM in response to TechnoCuban

    the same pain here :-(

    I have thousands letters with similar subject (logs actually) and they don't collapse

  • by Skip Norton,

    Skip Norton Skip Norton Oct 7, 2015 9:42 AM in response to Bill St. Clair
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 7, 2015 9:42 AM in response to Bill St. Clair

    Can apple give us an option to Group just by subject?

  • by jacqualine,

    jacqualine jacqualine Oct 8, 2015 1:10 AM in response to Bill St. Clair
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 8, 2015 1:10 AM in response to Bill St. Clair

    The best way is to contact Apple and report the issue so it can be documented. You can contact apple by calling 1-800-275-2273 or 1-800-MY-APPLE

     

    https://getsupport.apple.com/Issues.action

     

    Feedback is also a good way to notify Apple for issues, concerns or questions.

     

    http://www.apple.com/feedback/

     

    https://developer.apple.com/bug-reporting/

  • by jacqualine,

    jacqualine jacqualine Oct 8, 2015 1:30 AM in response to jacqualine
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 8, 2015 1:30 AM in response to jacqualine

    Login to Apple Bug Reporter
    https://bugreport.apple.com/
    Apple Inc.
    Please enter your Apple ID and password. ... An Apple ID is required to use this tool. ... JavaScript and cookies must be enabled to access the Bug Reporter.

  • by jacqualine,

    jacqualine jacqualine Oct 8, 2015 1:32 AM in response to Bill St. Clair
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 8, 2015 1:32 AM in response to Bill St. Clair

    Login to Apple Bug Reporter
    https://bugreport.apple.com/
    Apple Inc.
    Please enter your Apple ID and password. ... An Apple ID is required to use this tool. ... JavaScript and cookies must be enabled to access the Bug Reporter.

  • by Bill St. Clair,

    Bill St. Clair Bill St. Clair Oct 8, 2015 2:28 AM in response to jacqualine
    Level 1 (20 points)
    Apple Music
    Oct 8, 2015 2:28 AM in response to jacqualine

    I already made a report at http://www.apple.com/feedback/ . As I said earlier, I've heard that Apple actually acts on those reports, though they guarantee no feedback about them.

     

    I haven't tried https://bugreport.apple.com/, except to get logged in. It requires a developer account, which is more than most people want to do, but it does let you see your bug reports, and, I would assume, Apple's responses.

     

    https://getsupport.apple.com/Issues.action appears to be a way to invoke your support agreement on purchased products. If you're still in warranty or AppleCare on your Mac, you might get some help there.

     

    What is your experience, Jacqualine, with contacting Apple by these three different methods.

  • by Bill St. Clair,

    Bill St. Clair Bill St. Clair Oct 8, 2015 2:53 AM in response to Bill St. Clair
    Level 1 (20 points)
    Apple Music
    Oct 8, 2015 2:53 AM in response to Bill St. Clair

    I submitted an enhancement request through https://bugreport.apple.com/, asking for a preference to restore the old behavior. There appears to be no way to share those reports with other non-Apple people, but here's the text:

     

    WILLIAM ST CLAIR  08-Oct-2015 05:43 AM

    Summary:

    I get Fail2Ban mail from my web server, including the IP address of machines that provide bad credentials to my WordPress site. Before El Capitan, Mail would group all of the messages with similar subject lines ("re: foo" was grouped with "foo"). Now it uses some other algorithm, probably actually following chains of messages through other headers.  The new behavior is actually more "correct" than the old, but the old is often useful. Evidence this discussion: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7252086 

     

    Steps to Reproduce:

    1. Get two different email addresses. I used my gmail account and an account on the machine with Fail2Ban installed, which I read through Apple Mail. I'll call them sender and receiver below.

    2. From sender, send a message to receiver with the subject "Test conversation grouping", and the body "Thread 1, message 1".

    3. From sender, reply to the message in 2, with the body "Thread 1, message 2".

    4. From sender, send a new message to receiver with the same subject as in 2, and the body "Thread 2, message 1".

    5. Get receiver email with Apple Mail

     

    Expected Results:

    One conversation with subject "Test conversation grouping" and three messages: "Thread 1, message 1", "Thread 1, message 2", and "Thread 2, message 1".

     

    Actual Results:

    Two conversations, both with subject "Test conversation grouping". The first conversation has two messages: "Thread 1, message 1" and "Thread 1, message 2". The second has one message: "Thread 2, message 1".

     

    Notes:

    The new behavior is probably the right default. There actually ARE two conversations. But I'd like a preference to use the old classification scheme, that used only the subject to group conversations, and resulted in the "Expected Results".

     

    Configuration:

    In El Capitan, I get the "Actual Results". In Yosemite, I get the "Expected Results".

  • by wondras,

    wondras wondras Oct 8, 2015 10:12 AM in response to Bill St. Clair
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 8, 2015 10:12 AM in response to Bill St. Clair

    I sometimes receive hundreds of automated emails per day, which used to sort into convenient groups. This is a significant functional change from previous versions of OS X, and it is unfortunate that the old behavior has been entirely eliminated.

     

    Submitted to bugreport.apple.com.

  • by coffy.sk,

    coffy.sk coffy.sk Oct 9, 2015 1:28 AM in response to Bill St. Clair
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 9, 2015 1:28 AM in response to Bill St. Clair

    Thanks Bill for reporting this. This is outrageous ! I was living and breathing on Group by conversation concept. Now my emails are 1 big mess!

  • by Bill St. Clair,

    Bill St. Clair Bill St. Clair Oct 16, 2015 2:33 AM in response to Bill St. Clair
    Level 1 (20 points)
    Apple Music
    Oct 16, 2015 2:33 AM in response to Bill St. Clair

    Apple closed my bug report as a duplicate of another, still open, bug. Seems there's hope that they will fix it.

  • by ruddog,

    ruddog ruddog Oct 16, 2015 6:56 AM in response to Bill St. Clair
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 16, 2015 6:56 AM in response to Bill St. Clair

    I'm a Linux sysadmin who gets hundreds of automated emails a day, and a life long Windows user. I recently discovered that Apple Mail threaded emails with duplicate subjects, which made dealing with these automated emails infinitely easier. So much easier, that just last week I requested a 5K iMac to replace my Windows PC at work. I guess I can tell them to cancel that order now

  • by piti4ek,

    piti4ek piti4ek Oct 21, 2015 2:47 PM in response to Bill St. Clair
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 21, 2015 2:47 PM in response to Bill St. Clair

    No news on the problem?

  • by Bill St. Clair,

    Bill St. Clair Bill St. Clair Oct 21, 2015 2:52 PM in response to piti4ek
    Level 1 (20 points)
    Apple Music
    Oct 21, 2015 2:52 PM in response to piti4ek

    Not sure where we'd get news, except to notice a new version of Mail.app that fixes it. Apple has closed my bug report. They gave me a number of the one that mine duplicated, but there's no way for me to view that bug. They apparently pay attention to http://www.apple.com/feedback/, but they don't reply, only act, or not.

  • by dknelson99,

    dknelson99 dknelson99 Oct 22, 2015 4:34 AM in response to Bill St. Clair
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 22, 2015 4:34 AM in response to Bill St. Clair

    I too am experiencing this same issue.  I assume that everybody is but am not sure.  I was excited when I saw the available update yesterday but it appears that it did not include a fix for this issue.  Hope they get it worked out soon.

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