Junk Mailbox in Mail App? Need help....

Hey guys! I'm Dave and I am the very proud new owner of a MacBook Air. I already had an iPad, iPod, and iPhone, all of which I love, so I figured it was only natural for me to make the jump to a Mac for my main laptop. I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THIS THING!!! Not only is it an awesome and powerful machine, but when I hold it and handle it, I feel like I'm handling a fine piece of art. Truly an inspiring machine.

Although I apparently registered on this forum a very long time ago (which I have no memory of doing lol) this is really my first post. I am very impressed with all of the knowledge I've already learned from lurking around and reading some of the Stickys!!! So thankful to have a group of Mac geeks like me to help each other out!

I'm pretty computer savvy, but there definitely is a learning curve for me from trying to re-wire my brain away from MS products. So here's my problem:

I got my Hotmail (or as it's now called, Outlook) account synced up with the mail app that came with my MacBook. When I receive messages that the app believes to be "junk" it highlights them in gold and of course gives me the option to say that they are not junk. That's all good and well, but I was wondering, hoping, and thinking that there HAS to be a way for those messages that it thinks are junk to automatically go into a separate mailbox, preferably titled "junk". For the life of me, I can't figure out how to do this. I have created my own specialized mailboxes for organizing my emails, but I would really like it if those junk emails would not show up in my window and just go into a separate folder. I'm sure it's something simple, I just can't seem to figure it out!

Thanks for the help...and I look forward to hanging out in this forum a lot in the future!

-Dave

cardsfanjordan said:

So here's my problem:

I got my Hotmail (or as it's now called, Outlook) account synced up with the mail app that came with my MacBook. When I receive messages that the app believes to be "junk" it highlights them in gold and of course gives me the option to say that they are not junk. That's all good and well, but I was wondering, hoping, and thinking that there HAS to be a way for those messages that it thinks are junk to automatically go into a separate mailbox, preferably titled "junk". For the life of me, I can't figure out how to do this. I have created my own specialized mailboxes for organizing my emails, but I would really like it if those junk emails would not show up in my window and just go into a separate folder. I'm sure it's something simple, I just can't seem to figure it out!

Thanks for the help...and I look forward to hanging out in this forum a lot in the future!

-Dave

Click to expand...

Dave - Are these always from the same Sender(s)? If so, what I would do is something like the following.

1. From the Mail.app create a folder for them, let's call it Storage for now
2. Go into Mail/Preferences/Rules
3. Name your new Rule, short but descriptive
4. Choose any in the first drop down box
5. From / equals to (if you want to fill in the whole Sender address or contains (if you can enter pertinent info for each entry)
6. Click the + button on that line and repeat step 5 for each Sender

7. Once done, in the dropbox under Perform the following actions: click Move Message to mailbox Storage.

Not sure how to flag the Sender(s) as Not Junk but perhaps someone else can help out here.

Before you set up a rule try the following settings. It seems to put most of my junk mail in a folder for me so it is not in my Inbox:

1. With Mail Open Open its Preferences.
2, In the second tab (Junk Mail) be sure to Enable Junk Mail Filtering.
3. Click the option to move to the Junk Mailbox

That tab has a few options for items you may want to exempt from filtering.

Slydude said:

Before you set up a rule try the following settings. It seems to put most of my junk mail in a folder for me so it is not in my Inbox:

1. With Mail Open Open its Preferences.
2, In the second tab (Junk Mail) be sure to Enable Junk Mail Filtering.
3. Click the option to move to the Junk Mailbox

That tab has a few options for items you may want to exempt from filtering.

Click to expand...

THANK YOU!!!

Just as I suspected, it was something simple. Before I followed the steps you gave me, there was no "Junk" Mailbox even showing on the left side of my mail tab. As soon as I clicked the option to move it to the Junk Mailbox, it automatically created it for me. We will see if my junk mail ends up in there, but it looks like that did the trick. Thank you so much for your help! I LOVE THIS MACHINE!!! Just gotta do a little tweaking here and there to take it from "awesome" to "perfect". With your help, I'm one step closer!

Thanks again,

Dave

Brooklynguy said:

Dave - Are these always from the same Sender(s)? If so, what I would do is something like the following.

1. From the Mail.app create a folder for them, let's call it Storage for now
2. Go into Mail/Preferences/Rules
3. Name your new Rule, short but descriptive
4. Choose any in the first drop down box
5. From / equals to (if you want to fill in the whole Sender address or contains (if you can enter pertinent info for each entry)
6. Click the + button on that line and repeat step 5 for each Sender

7. Once done, in the dropbox under Perform the following actions: click Move Message to mailbox Storage.

Not sure how to flag the Sender(s) as Not Junk but perhaps someone else can help out here.

Click to expand...

I misunderstood you. I was under the impression that you wanted to keep the mail but that Mail.app was marking it as junk. Sorry about the answer I gave you, although in the line of thought I had it was a solution.

Good luck with your Mac experiences ahead of you.

BG

cardsfanjordan said:

THANK YOU!!!

Just as I suspected, it was something simple. Before I followed the steps you gave me, there was no "Junk" Mailbox even showing on the left side of my mail tab. As soon as I clicked the option to move it to the Junk Mailbox, it automatically created it for me. We will see if my junk mail ends up in there, but it looks like that did the trick. Thank you so much for your help! I LOVE THIS MACHINE!!! Just gotta do a little tweaking here and there to take it from "awesome" to "perfect". With your help, I'm one step closer!

Thanks again,

Dave

Click to expand...

Glad that helped. I did not remember if the Junk mailbox was always there or if it got created. I've had it for so long I just expect it to be there.

I have set mine to trust the junk header in messages. I usually have a few pieces of junk that get past the filter but not much (generally from iCloud). Once in a while I have something identified as junk that should not be but that is not often.

We will see if my junk mail ends up in there, but it looks like that did the trick.

Click to expand...

Your junk mail should be filtered out by your ISP not you. I rarely if ever get junk mail downloaded to my Mac Mail junk folder. My GMail account does a very good job of filtering it out before it downloads to me. A cursory check of the GMail folder once a week or so is all I need to do to make sure that real mail didn't wind up there.

I have a a few things that get past the Gmail filter and the one provided by my ISP but not much. Most of what gets past is sent to an account I used while writing for ATPM. Some gets past my iCloud account as well but overall I am quite pleased with how Mail handles this task.

This is one Mail function that seems to have improved over the years. At one time I considered dumping Mail's junk filtering in favor of SpamSieve.