Mail (Mountain Lion): If junk mail filters aren’t working correctly

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If junk mail filters aren’t working correctly

If Mail is incorrectly identifying junk mail, you can try various solutions.

If junk mail isn’t marked as junk

If junk mail isn’t highlighted in brown to indicate it’s junk, check your junk mail preferences.

  • Choose Mail > Preferences, and then click Junk Mail. Make sure the “Enable junk mail filtering” and “Mark as junk mail, but leave it in my Inbox” checkboxes are both selected.

    Change the junk mail filter

  • If you chose the junk mail preference to exempt addresses in your Previous Recipients list from filtering, check that your list contains only addresses you want to receive messages from.

    Manage addresses in the Previous Recipients list

  • If the problem persists, click Reset in Junk Mail preferences to reset the junk mail database to its original information. Resetting the database removes everything Mail has learned from you about what is junk or not junk, so you need to help Mail identify junk mail again.

If messages are incorrectly marked as junk

There are several ways you can prevent Mail from incorrectly marking legitimate messages as junk.

Last Modified: Sep 4, 2015
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