Mail app suddenly marking legit emails as Junk

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Level 1

103 points

Mail app suddenly marking legit emails as Junk

After years of flawless behavior, Mail (v13 on OS X 10.15.3) has started marking more and more legitimate emails as Junk, and placing them in the Junk folder.

This is strikingly new behavior, it's been going on for the past 4-6 months, getting worse over time, and there's been no changes in emails, no new email addresses added, no changes in settings in Mail or over at Gmail.

I've always been extremely responsive to immediately adding new legitimate email addresses to my Contacts application, adding the address, the proper name, business, checking spelling, even adding a photo image to 90% of them (not that this has any bearing). I'm also a Zero Inbox follower, so I'm constantly keeping Mail light on its feet, never more than say 15 emails in the Inbox, none in Drafts, I monthly remove large attachments, delete emails older than 18 months, etc. Again, though, none of this is new behavior. I haven't altered anything in the past 6 months since this started happening.

And these emails that are being caught in the Junk folder are from people/email addresses that I communicate with regularly.

I used to always keep Mail's Junk filter off, since all my email accounts are Gmail, and I'd always heard that was the better way to go. But since this issue, I've tried toggling Mail's Junk filter on and off, to no effect.

Anyone else seeing this new behavior? Any suggestions on a fix?

Posted on Mar 10, 2020 9:23 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

LD150

Level 10

101,219 points

Mar 10, 2020 3:13 PM in response to braintoniq

If they are brown headers with "Mail thinks this is junk" message then yes it is Mail and you need to click the Not Junk icon.

If they are plain headers without that message then rather go to your Google junk whitelisting.

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Answer 2

Old Toad

Level 10

215,718 points

Mar 14, 2020 10:37 AM in response to braintoniq

Boot into Safe Mode (Use Safe Mode to isolate issues with your Mac and Playing Safe: what does Safe Mode do?) and then reboot normally. That will clear out old cache, swap and system files, some of which may be corrupted, which might be the cause of the problems.

NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to 10 minutes as it's doing some system cache cleaning, volume verifying and directory repairing.

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Answer 3

LD150

Level 10

101,219 points

Apr 1, 2020 4:36 AM in response to Terri185

"....I am following along as I am having the same issue but none of my messages have the ‘brown header’. ..."

If you have no brown headers then it isn't Mail app causing the junk designation. Sign into your mail account in Safari and check out Your junk processing.

Providers each have their own whitelisting methods.

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Answer 4

LD150

Level 10

101,219 points

Mar 14, 2020 10:47 AM in response to braintoniq

Is it saying "Spam", or "Junk" as above? "Spam" would be from an email provider account like Google, unless USA has different wording to UK.

Try the Safe Boot first as per OT

but if you still get brown headers with "Junk" then try this...

Close Mail

In Finder click Go, then Go to folder

then copy this and paste into the Go to box.

~/Library/Mail/V7/MailData

In that folder look for file LSMMap2 and delete it.

Re-open Mail

If things are as bad as you say then this can't make it any worse.

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Answer 5

Old Toad

Level 10

215,718 points

Apr 1, 2020 10:46 AM in response to 2974

Do a search for the email and the results should show where it's been relocated to.

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Answer 6

braintoniq Author

Level 1

103 points

Mar 14, 2020 10:06 AM in response to braintoniq

Is there any way to reset Mail so this errant behavior will stop? Mail is now marking emails from my family members as spam! It just isn't making any sense why it suddenly is grabbing long-standing email addresses as junk/spam. There's got to be some way to reset things.

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Answer 7

braintoniq Author

Level 1

103 points

Mar 15, 2020 6:48 AM in response to LD150

Weird: as soon as click on any email in Mail's Junk folder, that brown header is visible for only a half a second and then quickly disappears (without any keyboard/mouse input). That's definitely new behavior. I remember seeing that brown header naturally appear at the top of most emails in that Junk folder, and would stay there unless I clicked on that Not Junk button.

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Answer 8

LD150

Level 10

101,219 points

Mar 15, 2020 9:43 AM in response to braintoniq

You're welcome, hope it works for you. It is annoying when all of a sudden your family member is seen as junk.

It can also be because they have been spoofed and so many emails invisibly go out in their name and they become branded.

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Answer 9

braintoniq Author

Level 1

103 points

Mar 18, 2020 8:17 AM in response to braintoniq

Reporting back after a few days to say that doing these two suggestions has completely cleared up the issue. After months of seeing more and more Contact-based emails landing in Junk, I've had zero over the past few days.

Many, many thanks for the help, all. I hope this thread helps others in the future.

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Answer 10

braintoniq Author

Level 1

103 points

Mar 19, 2020 9:31 AM in response to Terri185

Terri185, see if the two suggestions above fix your issue. They definitely did mine, and I also posted this solution to another Mac forum, and already 4 others have exclaimed their joy over the success they're seeing.

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Answer 11

LD150

Level 10

101,219 points

Mar 14, 2020 10:40 AM in response to braintoniq

So you are saying these are brown headers as described above?

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Answer 12

braintoniq Author

Level 1

103 points

Mar 15, 2020 6:52 AM in response to LD150

Very interesting deep solutions here, peter_watt! I've gone ahead and done both the Safe Mode and Library file deletion. I'll report back in a few days with the results.

Thank you VERY much, peter.

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