This is a weird problem. A couple of things to try:

First show the Menu Bar. Right click an empty area at the top of the window, and click Menu Bar.

- Menu: Tools: Options: Security: Junk. Click Reset Training Data. Restart Thunderbird.

- Menu: Tools: Message Filters. Look for any filters that could be incorrectly marking messages as junk.

Hi Bruce, Thanks for your reply. I tried your suggestions (which I have been through before) but it makes no difference unfortunately.

Unless someone else has any ideas, I can only suggest creating a new clean Thunderbird profile.

Create a clean new profile in Thunderbird and import your stuff from the old profile

Hi Bruce, I did a new installation of thunderbird on a new installation of linux and it immediatly exhibits the same behaviour? Any ideas? Thanks Julian

If you created a clean new profile, not copying the old profile files over, and it does the same thing, then I have no other ideas.

Hopefully someone else can help.

Hi Bruce, Thanks for your replies. I have posted a bug on the bugzilla website. Thanks Julian

Is this an IMAP account? Where your provider does junk filtering before Thunderbird gets a look in? That would be Google Yahoo AOL Hotmail and every other mail provider I am aware of.

Questions about whitelisting not working are almost always in the following categories.

1. IMAP filtering by the provider (almost universal) 2. Anti virus suites with spam and scan filters that make a royal mess of it. 3. Local Filters that mark messages as SPAM.

Most providers offer an option of opt out of their spam filtering, the obvious exception being Yahoo.

Hi Matt, Yes it is an IMAP account - BT Email - but there used to be an association with Yahoo. 3 questions come to mind. 1. what is it in the headers is it that thunderbird looks at to decide it is junk

2. If the sender is in the whitelist then thunderbird should not take any notice of anything from the ISP. Surely it is a bug if thunderbird ignores the whitelist - this should take precedence over any other info?

3. It does not seem possible to turn off the thunderbird junk controls - is it? - because I can't stop it from operating.

Thanks Julian

TB's junk filter should not junk-mark any message from sender in your address book if you set that option. BUT, for what I know the junk-filter doesn't UNMARK an already junk-marked message. So if your provider thinks its junk .... You could try making a filter to unmark.....