Sorting of Mail

I am using Lion. I use Mail as my email client with gmail as my provider. I have two questions:

1. As I create new folders I set the sort parameters to sort in descending sequence by Date. That works just the way I want it to. However, periodically I go into a folder and I find that the items have been resorted in ascending Subject order. If it is something I am doing, I am not aware of it. It is a minor annoyance, but easily fixable by resorting by descending Date. Is there a way that I can do that permanently? Or does anyone have an idea of what I am doing so that I can stop it?

2. Recently, I started getting a proliferation of copies (sometimes up to 30 copies) of the same email in my folders, especially my Spam and Trash folders. Again, it is a minor annoyance since I can highlight and delete them. But I'd like to stop it from happening.

Any thoughts?

Here's what it looks like on my Lion version of Mail:



If you're saying you've set it in a particular order and it won't stay that way, I would suggest rebuilding the mailbox and repairing permissions as possible fixes.

As for your other problem with the multiple copies, I'd be likely to suspect a problem with the order or number or configuration of the Rules you have set up.