Why is my email marked as read, when I haven't opened it? All email should be in bold until they have been opened but mine switch to non-bold text by themselves. Also when opened sometimes they are not in HTML when they should be and links to websites do not work. If I log in to my email online they display fine and the links work.
MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2012), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)
I started to get this problem when I set up Fetch every 15 minutes on my iPhone for mail accounts that don't use Push. I changed it back to Manual and the problem was fixed. This is not ideal but at least I don't miss any messages.
Hi guys - problem solved.
It's a server problem for me. I have an Exchange Account which I access from Outlook App on my laptop as well as from Apple's Mail App on my iPhone via IMAP protocol. What IMAP does is that it syncs your emails on all different devices with the server account, in this case my Exchange Account. Because the Exchange Account has initial settings similar to that of Office Outlook where it "marks items as read when selection changes", it appears to me that my iPhone Mail app automatically "read" my emails I deliberatively "unread" for later review when my iPhone syncs with the server. To the server selection has changed so it will mark the email as read and through sync it will mark the the unread emails on my iPhone as read as well. So I just go to the webpage of my online Exchange server and under Mail Settings "mark as read" section and select "Don't automatically mark items as read", and it will solve the problem.
Hope this helps as it gives me such a relief!
Apple doesn’t routinely monitor the discussions. These are mostly user to user discussions.
Send Apple feedback. They won't answer, but at least will know there is a problem or a suggestion for change. If enough people send feedback, it may get the problem/suggested change solved sooner.
Do you have your mail accounts configured with more than one system (e.g., a PC at work as well as your Mac)? For any of your email clients, do you have any automatic filters set up, such as junk filters (especially third-party filters)? Any automatic rules in any configured email client could result in this.
I didn't have the Mail->Preferences->Viewing "Mark all messages as read when opening a conversation" checked. So I guess that wasn't the problem.
I have checked "Display unread messages in a bold font" and "Display remote images in HTML messages" boxes and neither actually happens. I've tried unchecking them and shutting down the computer, then starting up again and checking them and shutting down again etc to no effect. I've done this several times over the last six months and the email account has never displayed the way it is meant to.
I have mail accounts for the MacBook Pro (which has OSX Mountain Lion 10.8.5) for my iPad3, my iPhone4 and an old MacBook which the kids use. It's only the MacBook Pro which has the problem. So I presume that the junk filtres used by my email provider is not causing the problem, as it is only one device that it happens.
I went onto my old MacBook (which is Snow Leopard) looking for an old email today and noticed that the email displayed properly and it made me realize how irritating it is that the email show as read when they are not. How confusing even.
I also have this issue. The mail on my iPhone is automatically marked as read but only when Apple's Mail app is running on my Macbook. (Even though it is still marked as unread on the Macbook)
Both email clients are configured as pop clients on a Yahoo (sbcglobal) account and I've tried disabling all the rules I have, to no avail. I do use iCloud but not for email. I'm really not sure what mechanism is connecting the iPhone client and the Macbook but the effect is immediate. The moment the OS X app loads a message, the iPhone changes it's status to 'read.'
I've searched here and found many with the same issue but nobody with any answers.
I had this problem with my iphone and yahoo mail.
On my iphone i deleted my yahoo mail account from the mail app.
Then added my yahoo mail account back.
That didn't work.
Then I remembered that I tried to install Outlook mail and the Yahoo mail app on my windows 10 pc. Those apps didn't really work like I wanted, I decided to remove those apps from my pc.
So far it's worked. The conflict must have been how one of those apps was downloading my mail.
Has anybody found an answer to this issue? Unlike Outlook where emails are marked read ONLY when opened in Mail it shows emails as read even if you stop for a couple of seconds when scrolling up or down. I would continue using Outlook for Mac but there are issues with the new El Capitan and Outlook
This problem started for me recently. After reading some of the responses above, it occurred to me that I recently added my gmail box to my yahoo email account, when yahoo the option.
Just went back in and deleted gmail inbox from my yahoo account ... and problem solved. Yahoo was getting a copy of the email and then marking it as read. Yahoo preferences allow you to mark as read immediately, after a few seconds or "never." But since I rarely use yahoo.com to get mail, I simply pulled the plug on the sync.
UPDATE: And the problem reoccurred! SOB!
Just realized, though, that after updating outlook mail recently, I'm getting visual notifications of emails at bottom-right of screen. Able to click and read or delete in those little boxes. Went into preferences of outlook and unchecked the box for visual notification popups. So far, test email I sent is still glowing bold as unread.
My problem, is that I decided to turn on the option to forward my email to another email account a while back. As usual when the dumb product manger/developers made changes to Mail, they assigned a new option to Forward my email AND MARK IT READ. This just happened late 2015 for me. Yahoo does not announce all vital changes in Mail... They started doing this after the people from Xobni (bought out) took over Mail. They'll dump crappy functions and expect users to adopt.
Anyways, to fix your problem, if you had set up forwarding your email long time ago:
From Yahoo Mail:
Go to Settings -> Accounts -> choose your Yahoo account -> near the bottom of the page you'll see "Access your email elsewhere" option - choose POP or change the Forward setting to 'Store and Forward" instead of "Store and forward and mark as read"
You can test right away by sending yourself an email from Yahoo account. If this solutions works, you may pump your fist in the air, and shout out any congratulatory phrase but "Yahoo!"
Mine was marked POP already.
I tested and retested a few times last week. Mobile devices turned off, on, etc. Outlook is the culprit. It marks everything read after a few mins.
Solution: new email client. I'm using Postbox 4 and it seems to work just fine.
Zamban's solution worked for me- just turn off iCloud sync for Email. You have to close out the email app (Gmail for me), and then open it again. Then emails stay marked as unread until you tap on them! Thanks zamban!!!
I had this issue for the past week or so and it has been driving me insane. I went settings and deleted 2 random filters - everything seems to be coming through now in bold and into the right folder on both macbook and iPhone 🙂 So happy!
I thought I found a fix...
Go to mail.google.com on a computer, then settings (the little gear icon in the top right) and click Accounts and Import. Toward the bottom is an area called "Grant access to your account:" and I didn't actually have any other accounts, but I changed the button from "Mark conversations as read when opened by others" to "Leave conversations unread when opened by others".
But no, it's still not working. :-(
Just makes me wonder how many email replies I never even noticed because they were already marked "read".
I Work at IT Help Desk and a customer had the same issue. Customer was using an outlook application on the MacBook that he had. I had to go online and change the settings in Outlook.com to not mark messages as read when selected. May be a temporary fix but it fixed the issue on the Outlook application.
Why is my email marked as read, when I haven't opened it?
