Mail: Organize By Conversation - wrong emails

I'm finding in Yosemite Mail that the "Organize By Conversation" view is useless because it is grouping together unrelated emails. I can have two separate threads of email discussion - featuring unconnected contributors - but Mail elects to combine them into a single conversation thread.


How can I stop it doing this?

Posted on Oct 31, 2014 12:08 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Oct 9, 2017 8:19 AM

Has anyone continued having this problem despite switching Mail software?


My mail is grouped 100% correctly online on Google Mail.

However on all email apps it was mixing up my mail.
I started on Spark then moved to another 3rd party Mail app, then tried Apple's own, and this issue was still there.


It led me to look at what is the constant between all the software. I nailed it down to the system clock.


My system is grouping messages incorrectly because I run my system clock +12mins fast (sounds silly but its beneficial to me to feel like Im constantly late...). So the system time doesnt match the 'real' international time, and it creates a weird vortex of mixing up groupings and email trails in incoming and sent messages on all of the applications.


Reverting my system clock to the 'set time and date automatically' setting resolved the issue across all software.


Hope that helps someone out. Was driving me crazy.

195 replies

Jan 26, 2015 6:32 AM in response to Richard Carr

I also had this problem: emails that are unrelated started being grouped together in one huge conversation. Some emails also went missing.

I first tried rebuilding the mailbox and manually removing the indexes; no effect.

Then I tried the beta of Mail 8.2 (with the beta of Yosemite 10.10.2); no effect.

I then removed the mail account and added it again; no effect.


I noticed that the problem does not exist on the mail server (Exchange), because with its web access the conversations appear fine.

Also, using other clients (I tried Thunderbird), there is no problem with these mails.


So then I created a new user on my mac and added the account to mail - completely fresh; hurray, problem solved.

I thus concluded that it would be a caching problem. I went back to my normal user account, removed the mail account and then deleted the mail cache (I moved ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail to another folder). Then I added the mail account again, the cache got recreated and all is now fine.


Of course this is still a bug and I reported the problem through the feedback assistent of the Yosemite beta. But anyway, removing the cache did work for me, it seems.

Jan 26, 2015 6:54 AM in response to JvL-PT

UPDATE:

Problem not solved :-((

Removing the cache may have resolved this for the Exchange account. It did not for my Google account, which also showed this problem.

Furthermore, the problem with the Google account now also shows up in Thunderbird... so now I wonder if the problem has been propagated (by Mail) to the emails on the Google server, or if it originated there...


I'm confused.

Jan 27, 2015 12:19 PM in response to Richard Carr

Just installed the 10.10.2 update, and the problem persists. I'm using all Google-based accounts, including a corporate Google account.


As a last ditch effort, I removed all of my email accounts. Deleted the IMAP cache for all of them, and then added the accounts back one by one. Still bad conversation groupings.


I'll file a bug on the developer site, but I don't think it will make much of a difference.

This thread has been closed by the system or the community team. You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers.

Mail: Organize By Conversation - wrong emails

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.