Junk mail filter not working in Sierra

You can use a different method to move junk mails .Open mail & its preferences > junk mail > check the box of perform custom actions ( click advanced to configure ) .

An another window appears .

An article for it : Mail for Mac: Junk Mail Advanced settings

I'm having the same problem reported here, but with a slight difference -- I didn't start seeing the problem *until* the 10.12.2 update. Junk filtering seemed to work fine for me after updating to Sierra, but as soon as I updated to 10.12.2, I see the same behavior reported here -- only about 10% of junk is flagged as such, lots of legitimate emails going into junk folder, and no apparent learning going on over time. Like others reported, using the "Reset" button doesn't seem to help.

I've also been having this problem since updating to Sierra. It didn't change when I updated to 10.12.2.

This morning I had 254 messages in my inbox, of which 3 where legit. The rest where spam. My junk mail

folder had 12 messages.

Before Sierra, the vast majority of junk went to my junk folder, and a small number wound up in the inbox.

I've reset the junk mail filer with no apparent change.

Most of the variants described in this thread are definitely true. Mail, after upgrading MacOS to 10.12.(1 or 2) does not learn about spam any longer; it worked very well before.

In my case, I am getting daily alerts from several science community networks that I do not want to get marked as spam. I unmarked those again and again for weeks by now, but Mail doesn't learn, not to mark them as spam. On the other hand, I have found that other addresses, I would like to get marked as spam, are not recognized as such, though I marked them as spam again and again. This never happened in earlier versions of Mail and is a bug without any doubt. Resetting the filter wouldn't change anything!

It's very difficult to diagnose this issue. I posted earlier in the thread as my iMac stopped filtering junk mail after upgrading to 10.12.1, but my MacBook Air, updated at around the same time, had no issue.

Following the update to 10.12.2, my iMac went back to normal functioning, with junk mail filtered as expected. Assuming the bug had been fixed, I then updated my Air. Of course, now junk mail filtering does not work on the laptop!

So two machines running the same versions of Sierra with different junk mail behavior each time....frustrating, to say the least.

You may be right. By now, I also observed "irrational" effects - positive ones (learning worked) as well as negative ones (did not work) - without changing any setting.

As a scientist I depend on all sorts of pre-pulication alerts from scientific journals and several of them will always end up in spam, regardless of repeated training or rules employed. The other way around, obvious spam (like ads on books by publishers) that will never get filtered into spam whatever I do, is also happening frequently.

I too have this issue. I have reset the mail spam filter more times than I care to mention and the spam filter still fails to learn. Another user on another thread suggested that the issue is related to the user profile because he declared that after starting a new user profile the spam filter really went back to learning.

I can't think of anything worse than starting a new user so Apple needs to provide a way for existing profiles to add the mail app back as if it was for a new profile.

I am 100% sure that within the confines of apple itself with the number of employees they have (and if they actually use apple mail themselves) that some people will have this same issue and if they do there is probably a fix for it within apples own support network internally. Well, we need that fix so come on Apple. Right now you are letting us down.

I am currently running 10.12.3 and mail junk filtering is a mess, it does not work no matter how many times I have reset it, I have trashed all of the mail files and settings and started from scratch 3 Times now and it does not work. Apple needs to fix this. I have used junk mail filtering in the past and it always worked under every os except Sierra. No matter how many times I tell mail something is or is not junk it just ignores what I tell it. I have even built rules and it ignores those rules too. At this time junk filtering in mail is completely useless.

Yes, I'm having this issue as well. I am now training the Mail app to filter all mail coming from YouTube (noreply@youtube.com); however, mails are still recognized as normal (not junk) mail. I saw a work-around - I taught the rules in filtering junk mail under the Rules tab in Mail's Preference pane, rather than inputting the rules under the Junk tab. I tested this method using my Gmail account to send an email to my Yahoo! account with the rule that any email containing the word test in the Subject field be transferred to the Junk mailbox; consequently, it followed the rule that I taught.

I don't know if there are drawbacks in teaching Mail to filter junk messages under the Rules tab, but this method will do for now.

Hi,

I seem to be having the same problem with the trashed junk mail going from brown to black. When I delete a junk mail from the junk mailbox, it moves to the trash but is no longer marked as junk. If I select "mark as junk" it moves back to the junk mailbox and returns to its brown color. Before, I was able to open my trash mailbox and see all of the deleted e-mails and be able to see at a glance which ones were junk and which ones weren't.

Did you ever find a solution to this problem? I've searched the Internet to the moon and back and yours is the only reference to the junk mail changing when it goes into the trash.

Hey David,

The problem was solved only in part: the filtering had improved after a couple of the OS updates, but still, when I send the messages to the trash, they are NOT color marked as junk, although they seem to be recognized as such by the system. Sometimes, I still get junk from the spammers I've already dismissed, but not on a regular basis. The volume of spam that tricks the filter is certainly smaller. To sum up: the filter is not one hundred percent effective, but it's manageable.

when I send the messages to the trash, they are NOT color marked as junk, although they seem to be recognized as such by the system.

I don't think there is any intention to move them to the Trash. The Junk mailbox can be emptied manually or on a schedule just like the Trash. Moving the emails out of the Junk folder may be affecting the Junk recognition. Not certain, just a guess based on how it works now when you Move to Inbox instead of marking "Not Junk."

Hi Barney,

Thanks for your reply.
Well, I don't know about you, but I receive around 3 to 4K spams every week, and the only way to emptying the Junk box I'm aware of is selecting and DELETING the messages – considering that I do it manually. When doing so, they go directly to the Trash, as I've described before (not color marked). From there, I then have the option to delete them permanently, along with other discarded stuff, from all the mailboxes.

Ale_Moretti wrote:

… the only way to emptying the Junk box I'm aware of is selecting and DELETING the messages – considering that I do it manually.

Right-click on the Junk Mailbox and choose, Erase Junk Mail, or set up the Mailbox Behavior to automatically erase Junk messages every day, week, month, or when quitting Mail.

Nice! 🙂

No one had pointed this "right-click" solution on this forum before.
That might be my method of choice from now on, I'll see how effective it turns out to be, over the weeks to come.

Thanks for sharing, Barney, that was helpful.