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Emails marked as 'not junk' being moved to Junk folder

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I have a filter on my Thunderbird to move every email from a certain address book (clients) into a certain folder. One of these clients bounces through that folder and into my junk mail - every time I open Thunderbird, it obviously runs something and bounces them straight to junk. They are part of my address book, and their emails do not show the junkmail symbol.

If I mark them as 'not junk', they go to the appropriate place, but low and behold, the next day all of their emails are back in my junk mail folder.

If they send me an email while I have Thunderbird running, it goes straight to my junk mail as well.

This is driving me somewhat nuts as I don't pick up their emails (and since they are a client, this is particularly unhelpful!)! Is there a fix for this?

I have a filter on my Thunderbird to move every email from a certain address book (clients) into a certain folder. One of these clients bounces through that folder and into my junk mail - every time I open Thunderbird, it obviously runs something and bounces them straight to junk. They are part of my address book, and their emails do not show the junkmail symbol. If I mark them as 'not junk', they go to the appropriate place, but low and behold, the next day all of their emails are back in my junk mail folder. If they send me an email while I have Thunderbird running, it goes straight to my junk mail as well. This is driving me somewhat nuts as I don't pick up their emails (and since they are a client, this is particularly unhelpful!)! Is there a fix for this?

Chosen solution

Can you confirm a couple of points?

1. Tools > Account Settings > Junk Settings for the mail account select: enable adaptive junk mail controls for this account

under 'do not automatically mark email as junk if the send is in' Make sure the 'Client' address book is selected.

click on Ok

2. Tools > Message Filters select the fiter and click on Edit Apply filter when: Select: 'Manually run Select : Getting new mail select: Filter before Junk classification click on Ok

Note: Filters run in the order they are listed. It may be possible for that person / email address to get picked out by another filter and the mail is moved prior to the 'client' filtering. So it is not in Inbox when the Client filter runs, Suggest you move the 'client' filter to the top of the list, so that it runs first.

3. Check all address books to see if that persons email address is in more than one location. check 'Collected Addresses' as well.

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All Replies (6)

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Suluhisho teule

Can you confirm a couple of points?

1. Tools > Account Settings > Junk Settings for the mail account select: enable adaptive junk mail controls for this account

under 'do not automatically mark email as junk if the send is in' Make sure the 'Client' address book is selected.

click on Ok

2. Tools > Message Filters select the fiter and click on Edit Apply filter when: Select: 'Manually run Select : Getting new mail select: Filter before Junk classification click on Ok

Note: Filters run in the order they are listed. It may be possible for that person / email address to get picked out by another filter and the mail is moved prior to the 'client' filtering. So it is not in Inbox when the Client filter runs, Suggest you move the 'client' filter to the top of the list, so that it runs first.

3. Check all address books to see if that persons email address is in more than one location. check 'Collected Addresses' as well.

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Thanks for the speedy reply. I already had adaptive junk mail controls in place, as well as the filter before junk part on my filter. I have added the 2nd part of the first step - hoping that will fix it!

Your help is much appreciated!

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Sorry brain malfunction, not the problem I am having, response edited.

Modified by poddys

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One of my users is having a very similar problem; they are 1 of 8 users of Thunderbird 31.x all on Win7.

But this user has no filters setup. Out of the blue, as described to me, email from people that she is expecting now goes right into the Junk folder, yet these emails have no flame icon in the list item.

One can contextually click on the email in the list, mark as "Not Junk Mail", TB moves to inbox where it gets a star next to it. Then sometime later, moments or minutes or after a quit/open of TB, the emails are back in Junk folder.

This is of course driving my client crazy. But since the client says she has no filters, changing the filtering will not solve this issue.

Any other thoughts about what might be causing this to happen?

Peace, Dan

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backinterrapin you do not say whether:

  • your client has set up the adaptive Junk mail Controls.
  • Has trained those controls.
  • what type of mail account they use - Pop or IMAP.
  • Whether the emails have been marked as 'Spam' - The use of the word 'SPAM' means that your client or the server is using an anti-spam product .

Your client first needs to make sure they have actually setup Junk Controls correctly and then train it by selecting both good emails and mark as not junk and bad email marking as junk. here is a link to Junk Controls.

Make sure they have emptied the Junk folder and then compacted it. Right click on Junk folder to see those two options.

Please ask if the client compacts all folders on a regular basis, because they should be doing this. Please ask if your client keeps the Inbox low in email numbers and only use as an inbox for incoming mail and not as a general store.

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Dear Toad-Hall,

Thanks for the follow up. We just figured it out. It had nothing to do with TB! The user also had the email app on their android which had marked all email from aol and another domain as spam and was putting the email back in junk folder after them being moved out in TB. What a hoot.

But to answer your questions, in case it helps someone:

  • adaptive on and trained
  • IMAP
  • Not marked as spam but if you looked at header they were marked as possible spam with a very low score

Peace, Dan