Mail won't erase junk mail

What type of account is this (POP, IMAP, .Mac)?

Try changing that setting to Never, then quit Mail (or, better yet, restart the computer), then open Mail again, change it back to what you want, and see whether that makes a difference.

Also, I don't know whether it might have a bearing on this, but what are your settings for Trash in Preferences > Accounts > Mailbox Behaviors?

Can you manually delete those messages without problems, or do they reappear in Junk if you try to delete them?

Re-reading your first post, it looks like you have no problems manually deleting those messages, so this might be a preferences corruption issue.

Verify/repair your disk first (not just permissions), as described here:

The Repair functions of Disk Utility: what's it all about?

After having fixed all filesystem issues, if any, try this:

1. Quit Mail if it's running.

2. Make a backup copy of the ~/Library/Mail folder, just in case something goes wrong. You can do this in the Finder by dragging the folder to the Desktop while holding the Option (Alt) key down, for example. This is where all your mail is stored.

3. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Preferences/. Locate com.apple.mail.plist and move it to the Desktop (to be deleted if this fixes the problem).

You'll have to set up your non-Mac accounts from scratch all over again. If given the option to import existing mailboxes or something like that, don't. Just enter the account information and Mail will automagically rediscover the data in ~/Library/Mail/ when done.

You'll also have to re-configure most of your settings in Mail > Preferences. For spam-related security reasons, the first thing you should do is go to Preferences > Viewing and disable Display remote images in HTML messages if it's enabled.

Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user's home folder. You can easily locate any of the folders referred to in this post by copying the file path here, doing Go > Go to Folder in the Finder, and pasting the file path there.

I have a similar problem. I use Apple Mail (in POP3 mode) and Spamsieve, and it NEVER removes junk mail from my mail server (a Unix hosted domain). I have "delete permanently on move from inbox" and "delete permanently when deleted in Mail" set properly.

How do I know? If I read all mail in my inbox, and delete all the mail in the junk mail folder, then use something like Thunderbird in IMAP mode, I found that my /var/mail/sparker was 95+Mb full of garbage from the previous year (or much more)

Interestingly, if I have message that lands in my inbox (no rules processing) and I manually delete them, they get removed properly from the /var/mail/sparker file. If Rules or SpamSieve move them, they never get deleted properly.

So... For those of you with external hosts for your mail, go check your /var/mail/<userid> file. I'd bet they're huge.....

I've got to the point where I read and process all my mail using AppleMail, then quit, launch thunderbird, and delete everything manually. Seems ridiculous, but that's what I'm doing now.

I like SpamSieve enough (with 99.7% accuracy) that I'd prefer not to switch to Thunderbird exclusively. But if I have to keep processing mail using BOTH tools, then I'm going to have to switch.

Steve

I don't really know what's going on here, but this is the next thing I would try:

1. Quit Mail.

2. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Mail/. Make a backup copy of this folder, just in case something goes wrong -- e.g. by dragging it to the Desktop while holding the Option (Alt) key down.

3. Locate Envelope Index and move it to the Trash. If you see an Envelope Index-journal file there, delete it as well.

4. Open Mail. It will tell you that your mail needs to be "imported". Click Continue and Mail will proceed to re-create Envelope Index -- Mail says it's "importing", but it just re-creates the index if the mailboxes are already in Mail 2.x format.

From another thread ( http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=637485&tstart=0), I got mail to properly clean up messages from my remote POP3 server. See below....

Steve

However, in a post earlier this evening, I mentioned
that I changed the setting for the "Remove copy from
server after retrieving a message:" from "Right Away"
to "When moved from Inbox" (and yes, those are the
exact text strings in the Accounts -> Advanced
Preference pane), and the messages are now removed
correctly from /var/mail/<user> on my host.

So, something that the rules processing interacting
with the "Right Away" setting is not cleaning up
properly. Changing it to "When moved from Inbox" is
cleaning up messages that the Rules move to other
folders (including messages that Spamsieve moves to
other folders).

Just FYI, the change in settings from "Right Away" to "When Moved from InBox" has resolved the problem with the messages not being removed from /var/mail/<user> on my remote hosted POP3 server.

When I change the setting back to "Right Away", any messages that are moved by "Rules" are not removed from the remote hosted POP3 Server. So... I believe something's wrong with the "Right Away" setting.

Steve

Steve,

The issue you're talking about has absolutely nothing to do with the problem being discussed here. The OP wants junk messages stored locally on his/her computer to be permanently erased from the local Junk mailbox, according to his/her Preferences > Accounts > Mailbox Behaviors > Junk settings. The Preferences > Accounts > Advanced > Remove copy from server settings have absolutely no bearing on this.

Steve,

The issue you're talking about has absolutely nothing
to do with the problem being discussed here. The OP
wants junk messages stored locally on his/her
computer to be permanently erased from the
local Junk mailbox, according to
his/her Preferences > Accounts > Mailbox Behaviors

Junk settings. The Preferences > Accounts >

Advanced > Remove copy from server settings have
absolutely no bearing on this.

The primary reason I posted this update is that I wanted to make sure that people knew that my earlier, potentially misleading post to this thread was solved and how.

Sorry I've managed to upset you (again).

Steve

Steve,

The primary reason I posted this update is that I wanted
to make sure that people knew that my earlier, potentially
misleading post to this thread was solved and how.

OK. Thanks for the clarification.

Sorry I've managed to upset you (again).

You haven't. And I already told you that I wasn't upset in the other thread either.

I also have the problem of junk mail never being automatically deleted after 1 day. However they delete fine manually.

Are there any new thoughts on this matter? Sounds to me like a cron problem... that whatever timer is supposed to kick off the delete is not set.

Al

I too have had this ongoing problem since I've had several macs for several years- the MAILBOX BEHAVIORS for 3 pop accounts, all of which are set to ERASE SENT mssgs when ONE DAY OLD, ERASE JUNK when QUITTING MAIL and TRASH (which are moved to separate folder) is set to ERASE WHEN ONE DAY OLD.
NONE of these have worked. I can close/open MAIL and look into these boxes after one day or when quitting mail and all are still there. I too can manually delete all without any problems, I'd just like these settings to auto-delete for me as they say they will.
One person below mentioned a possible CRON script problem I just wonder if my running weekly CRON scripts using YASU application, might cause this problem? I have it set to: Run Daily, Weekly and Monthly cron scripts, plus set to clear system and user caches, clear browser's cache, download cache and history, remove cookies, and clear application and system logs, and clear archived logs. I wonder if some of these logs or caches being cleared has to do with this not working?

This problem still persists. I have my Mail preferences set exactly the same as the OP. The only way this seems to work is if I quit mail and re-launch it. But that is a poor work around for something that should 'just work'. Any other solutions to this annoying little problem?