A regular correspondent's email is ALWAYS placed in SPAM no matter how many times I say it isn't spam

Is it thunderbird, or your mail host, that is classifying the message as spam?

Your mail host also has spam filters. So you may need also to tell your mail host to whitelist your sender. How to do that will depend on your mail host, but a search for whitelist should help you.

Harry, I have no idea what you're talking about. Since this did not occur before I loaded up Thunderbird I assume it is Thunderbird. Clearly you're useless. Can someone tell me how to get thunderbird to stop labeling my friends email as spam?

Clearly you're useless.

Answers like this one don't encourage people to help you, they may even urge them to dump you ... The more since harry's questions are correct and completely justified.

Harry's comments were of no help to me at all. Feel free to dump me. And I will dump Thunderbird. I have no use for a company that does not provide customer support.

BTW, does anyone associated with Thunderbird even read these comments? I thought not.

And I will dump Thunderbird.

Good riddance...

But I'm not ready to give up yet. First, I do apologize to Harry (usually spelled with a capital H). I realize he was just trying to help. His tone that it was someone else's problem annoyed me. I'm looking for help from Thunderbird, not passing the blame to someone else. I don't know who Harry is. I don't know who you are. I don't know why Harry responded. I only know that I sill have not received an answer to my original question. Any chance someone can direct me to the operating instructions for marking mail spam?

This is a user-help-users forum and no after-sales service for a program you can download and use for free. We are voluntary helpers in this forum and no employees of Mozilla Foundation nor of the Thunderbird community. harry (whatever was the reason why he chose a lower case h - this is no spelling competition site) is one of the volunteers in this forum and what he wrote makes sense. As for myself I'm an active volunteer since 15 years in French, German, mozillazine.org Thunderbird forums and more recently in SUMO. I'm familiar with Thunderbird since I use it from the beginning and also before its ancestors Netscape Communicator and Mozilla Suite in the last century. Do you need recommandation letters and/or certificates? Unfortunately I can only provide a MD diploma... Here is some reading for you https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-and-junk-spam-messages

Also view my screen shots for Account settings > account name > Spam settings and for global spam settings in Settings > Privacy & Security > Spam...

Hey, lets take a couple of steps back. I'm sure this is a soluble problem.

First, look at the first sentence of my reply. It only asks a question. It does not say the problem is elsewhere. It was just the next question that needed asking, bearing in mind you did say you had "tried everything suggested" in thunderbird.

The information "this did not happen before I loaded up thunderbird" was not in the opening post. Had you mentioned that, I would possibly have started with a different question.

OK, let's try to prove that it's thunderbird, not your mail host, that is moving those messages to spam.

In thunderbird Tools > Account Settings click on Spam Settings. Look under the Destination and Retention heading. You probably have the default configuration that moves new spam messages to the Spam folder for your own email account. A simple change will help to make that proof.

Select the option "Other", and then in the dropdown choose Local Folders. This will give you a further dropdown where you can choose the spam folder in Local Folders instead of the spam folder for your email account. If you have more than one mail account in Account Settings, repeat for the others.

Does the next message you receive from that sender go to the spam box in Local Folders (which would prove thunderbird moved it) or does it still go to the Spam folder in your email account?

harry, Thank you for giving me something to do. I will give it a shot and let you know what happens. Since I did not understand how this site works I had no idea who you were or why you were responding. Perhaps a brief intro would help novice users like me feel more comfortable using the site. This was the only option Mozilla provided for customer support. I will try to put aside my irritation with Mozilla for farming it out.

OK. I was out of town for a while but am now back. I've attempted what you describe. Attached is a screen shot of the Spam Settings. The email that is always labeled spam is in my personal address book. The text says I must "first train Thunderbird" yet I never did that. I believe the adaptive spam control was already set when I loaded the program. Perhaps I need to uncheck this item and then train the program.

I also note that I can't tell the difference between the two lines under "Destination and Retention".  Which one is the one you recommend?

Regarding this whole interaction, I am used to looking in a "user guide" when I encounter problems. I could not find one for Thunderbird. I have also loaded Planmaker and note that it does provide a link to a pdf guide under the help feature. I selected help with no idea who would respond. I disagree with your "next question". A better question would have been "what have you done so far"? Also, a statement of your credentials would have helped.

Finally, I'm not in the habit of buying unknown products. I intended to give Thunderbird a try and, if it worked, buying it. I do like the program and am inclined to buy it now that I know how it works.

Steven Brown

Thunderbird has a help section at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/thunderbird which includes a section https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/thunderbird/installation-and-updates

There's a specific section on the adaptive filter at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-and-junk-spam-messages

The settings you have shown should make the Personal Address Book become a whitelist, so that thunderbird does not move new incoming messages to spam. But it might not override any settings that the adaptive filter has already created. So I think you do need to train the filter, by going to the spam folder, globally selecting all messages from that recipient and marking them "this is not junk" if you have not already done that.

| I also note that I can't tell the difference between the two lines under "Destination and Retention".

The second one is a dropdown. By default its first line shows the same folder as the first option, so isn't actually useful. But click on the down mark and you will see the other options, including Local Folders. That will then give a list of local folders, which should include Junk (or maybe Spam). The second option will then show Junk on Local Folders instead of the same folder you had before.

| Which one is the one you recommend?

Normally, I'd recommend the first one. But that moves spam messages to your spam folder on cox.net and leaves no easy way to tell whether it was thunderbird or cox that put the message there. For debugging, we can tell thunderbird to put spam messages in a the local folder so we can be certain it is thunderbird that is putting the messages there.