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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-OTHER, OS X El Capitan (10.11)

Posted on Oct 1, 2015 3:38 AM

74 replies

albrin

Level 1

2 points

Oct 5, 2015 9:47 AM in response to Bill St. Clair

Very well done

mecarpen

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.

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

Oct 7, 2015 9:42 AM in response to Bill St. Clair

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

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/

Oct 8, 2015 1:30 AM in response to jacqualine

Login to Apple Bug Reporterhttps://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.

Oct 8, 2015 1:32 AM in response to Bill St. Clair

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.

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".

wondras

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.

coffy.sk

Level 1

4 points

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!

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.

ruddog

Level 1

9 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 😟

piti4ek

Level 1

5 points

Oct 21, 2015 2:47 PM in response to Bill St. Clair

No news on the problem?

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.

Conversations not grouped by subject in El Capitan mail