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Why are emails from my wife, who is on all my address books, being sent to the Spam folder?

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My wife's name and email address are on my Personal Address book, and on my "export" address list, and on my "Collected Addresses". I have many times found emails from her in my Spam folder. Each time, I have marked them as "Not Junk". Yet it keeps happening. Why? Is there any way to tell Thunderbird that emails from people in my address books should NEVER be sent to the Spam folder?

My wife's name and email address are on my Personal Address book, and on my "export" address list, and on my "Collected Addresses". I have many times found emails from her in my Spam folder. Each time, I have marked them as "Not Junk". Yet it keeps happening. Why? Is there any way to tell Thunderbird that emails from people in my address books should NEVER be sent to the Spam folder?

All Replies (8)

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If you really mean SPAM folder you will have to look elsewhere. Thunderbird does not use a Spam folder. By default it marks it as Junk and leaves it in your Inbox. You would have to setup Junk Controls to get Thunderbird to mark it as Junk and place in a Junk folder.

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It may help if you access the account from webmail and add her address to the webmail contacts so she's treated as a 'trusted sender' before messages are downloaded to TB.

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Thanks for both efforts, but no luck. The "Spam" folder is for Junk - I don't know why it is called Spam. I went to webmail, but she is already among the contacts listed there.

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Please add the troubleshooting information to your post To find the Troubleshooting information:

  • Open Help (or click on three-line-icon and select Help)
  • Choose Troubleshooting Information
  • Use the button Copy to clipboard to select all. Do not check box "Include account names"!
  • Paste this in your post.
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Application Basics

   Name: Thunderbird
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I suggest you contact whoever runs mail.lifesci.ucsb.edu and enquire about their anti-spam policy. Your description very much suggests that an external agency is mis-categorising and moving messages to the Spam folder.

Thunderbird's native system uses the word Junk and labels messages as Junk. Any reference to "Spam" generally comes from somewhere else, such as personal security software, or an anti-spam system operated by the email provider.

Please clarify; you say "the "Spam" folder is for Junk". What is your justification for this statement? Did you create this folder? Did you rename the Junk folder? Do you not also have a "Junk" folder? And do the messages from your wife which appear in the Spam folder have Thunderbird's junk icon, usually an orange flame? The absence of the Junk icon would confirm that something else is doing the moving to Spam.

Finally, look at your account settings and make sure your Personal Address Book and Collected Addresses are nominated as sources of trusted senders. Personally I wouldn't include Collected Addresses as it can become tainted by untrusted contacts.

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Thank you. I think this is almost certainly right. I do not have a "Junk" folder. I don't think I named the "Spam" folder. The folder itself is marked with an orange flame, but the mail in it is not. If I mark an email in it as "not Junk", it goes back to the Inbox. If I mark an Inbox email as "Junk", it goes to the "Spam" folder, and gets an orange flame. So it seems likely that the lifesci administrators made a "Spam" folder to contain both "Junk" (defined by Thunderbird or me) and "Spam" (defined by them). Thanks so much for figuring this out and clearing it up.

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I don't know why when I receive emails that are stated as junk or spam and I choose the option 'Not Spam or Junk" the software doesn't automatically update those emails so they don't appear as junk or spam in the future. Plus the sender email address is in my email address book.