Mac mail grouping multiple senders into one

[Reflex]

I've been meaning to post this for awhile now, but my apple mail is grouping multiple senders that have absolutely nothing to do with one another together. If you look at the attached screen shot, you can see there are 506 messages in that one 'group'. Most of which have nothing to do with each other.

This seams like a major glitch unless there is a way to fix this, which i'm hoping there is. It makes it extremely difficult to go back to find certain emails and if an email is buried, like many of these are, then it doesn't even show up in a search.

Hoping the gurus here can help me out again with some advice

View attachment Screen Shot 2015-01-12 at 7.41.46 PM.pdf

 

[MacInWin]

So what's the problem? By selecting Inbox at the top of three accounts, you get the inbox of all three at once. IF you only want to see the first one, for example, just highlight just that one inbox. It's not a glitch, it's how Mail is designed. Personally, I love it because I also have multiple email addresses and seeing them all at once is brilliant.

Emails should show up in a search, even if you have the Inbox selected instead of ONE inbox. But if you select ONE inbox, search will only search THAT inbox, as is logical for it to do. Same for Sent, if you have multiple send servers.

EDIT: Also, if there ia a thread of emails, in this view you see all of the TO: addressees for the thread. But if you open the thread, then each email shows separately. Search also still works as it looks at individual emails, not at the aggregated display. Personally, I like this view, too, as I get to see where a thread has responses to the original email.

 

[Reflex]

No, that isn't my issue. All of the 506 emails it shows belong in the inbox to that one email address. My issue is that the email is from Mike Curtis as you can see. But it shows 506 emails from Mike Curtis, Bonnie Baec...etc. Bonnie's emails should not be lumped with Mike's as they have nothing to do with each other. That 506 number should reflect ONLY the emails from Mike Curtis, and not everyone else it shows down the list.

If I click the arrows beside the 506 (in the screen shot they are down to reveal the list of all the names that shouldn't be there) then all the other emails are hidden. Let's say I want to look at an email I received from R S earlier that day. I won't be able to find it unless i either search for R S, or click on the email from Mike Curtis in order to find his email. I shouldn't have to click on an email from Mike Curtis to find an email from R S since they have nothing to do with each other.

Does this make more sense now?

 

[MacInWin]

OK, I can't see the image any more, but I'll try to work through it. What view are you seeing these numbers? I can't get any counts to show up in my Mail. I'm not using any smart mailboxes or anything, just Mail.

 

[bobtomay]

Am not really following what you're talking about as some things you're talking about are not in that screenshot - so we're all a little lost.

What we see in that screen shot is that your top most inbox is highlighted - which is going to show all emails in all three of the email accounts you have set up. Next we see you have the "Sort" set by date.

There is no 506 anything in the screenshot you've posted. So, we can't "see" that and don't know what you mean by "group".

After scratching my head for a good long while and trying to get my Mail window to look like yours - I'm guessing you're doing a "search" in Mail? If so, you haven't told us that either.

Back up a little and fill in the details of what you are doing.

 

[Reflex]

Ya, figured it might be a little confusing. Here's another attachment that has cuts out the other mailboxes as that wasn't an issue.

I've circled the number of messages (was 506 in my original post, now 533). I've also circled who this message thread is from. You can see three names there, Mike Curtis, Holliday, Matt...... Here are many others in that 533. If you look at the attachment in my original post, you see what it looks like when you click the arrows beside the 533 number.

It's showing 533 messages in this email thread when none of these messages have anything to do with one another.

Does this make more sense now I hope?

...also, these are all from the same mailbox.

 

[bobtomay]

Ahh - conversations....

Can't help you there. It didn't work right (or not the way I expected it to) when it first came out and I unchecked that feature and have never looked at nor used it again.

My personal fix:
Try the View button, if there's a check next to 'Organize by conversation' - click it to remove the check mark.

You can also head into Preferences - the View tab and uncheck everything under the conversation section.

 

[MacInWin]

Do the 533 messages all have the same subject line? If they do, that may be how they are all linked. Mail thinks they are all the same thread if the subject lines are the same, no matter the addressees. (It does ignore the "Re:" at the beginning of replies to keep the threads together).

 

[MBP17•David]

Why are you keeping all your messages in your Inbox?

If you setup multiple folders and subfolders, and create rules to automatically sort the incoming messages, everything will be arranged correctly. Otherwise it is just various degrees of a big mess.

I have hundreds of thousands of email messages, grouped into 13 main folders and (apparently) 242 subfolders, and my inbox is empty. That's across all 8 accounts that go into the smart inbox, plus there are two more IMAP accounts with separate inboxes, still empty though (I only registered those to own the domains, don't actually use them).

 

[MBP17•David]

OK, I just checked the V2 and it's only 207,132 emails, so not hundreds of thousands as such, more like a couple of hundred (of thousands), but still quite a few I'd say

 

[bobtomay]

Why are you keeping all your messages in your Inbox?

...snip

Yeah, I can't do that either.

Everything gets moved out of the inbox once it's been handled.
And rules to auto move into their own folders for all the stuff I don't "have to" read unless I want to.

 

[MacInWin]

@Reflex, you haven't answered my question about Subject line. I just go an email in with the same subject line as an email I receive a long time ago and the two were shown as a "thread" even though they aren't really. So, as I said, I think the reason your emails are being clumped like that is that they have the same subject line.

 

[Reflex]

@Reflex, you haven't answered my question about Subject line. I just go an email in with the same subject line as an email I receive a long time ago and the two were shown as a "thread" even though they aren't really. So, as I said, I think the reason your emails are being clumped like that is that they have the same subject line.

Ya, sorry, just got back to this now. No, the subject line is different in them all. Some unrelated messages have 'mortgage' in the subject (as i'm a mortgage broker) but many don't have anything even closely resembling that, yet they are still grouped in.

Never thought of putting things into different folders. Even if I were, all these messages are from clients, so they would all go into the same folder anyway.

 

[MacInWin]

I'm running out of ideas. One other question you didn't answer was from bobtomay in post #5

After scratching my head for a good long while and trying to get my Mail window to look like yours - I'm guessing you're doing a "search" in Mail? If so, you haven't told us that either.

I, too, cannot get what you are showing in your screenshots. What are you doing to get that view?

 

[dtravis7]

View up top while you are in message. Turn off organize by Conversation.

 

[Reflex]

I'm running out of ideas. One other question you didn't answer was from bobtomay in post #5 I, too, cannot get what you are showing in your screenshots. What are you doing to get that view?

I'm not doing a search. Just opening up mail and that is it.

Funny, after bobtomay suggested I click view at the top and see if there is a check beside conversation, I took a look and it wasn't checked. But then today I checked again and it was there. I unchecked it and everything went away. I did like having all the emails from the same sender grouped together in a 'conversation' like that. It would have been nice if it didn't group unrelated messages with it as well. It seems like a glitch unless there is something else i'm doing wrong.

 

[MacInWin]

I'm still thinking that somehow all the email subjects are related somehow, by some combination of words that leads the software to bundle them together. As I said, I got two emails over a year apart that just happened to have the same subject line and Mail put them together as a conversation when pretty clearly they are not. Is there ANY commonality you can see in the 500+ emails?

 

[MBP17•David]

Your screenshot shows the subject of 533 emails as "2nd mortgage...", so I agree with what Jake has been saying all along - conversation is grouped together by the subject.

If you want Mail to arrange messages by sender, select View | Sort by | From

I still think the way Mail sort messages by default is the best, when assisted by organising your incoming mails into separate folders.

 

[Reflex]

I'm still thinking that somehow all the email subjects are related somehow, by some combination of words that leads the software to bundle them together. As I said, I got two emails over a year apart that just happened to have the same subject line and Mail put them together as a conversation when pretty clearly they are not. Is there ANY commonality you can see in the 500+ emails?

I thought that might be a possibility quite some time ago, as it makes sense, but doesn't seem to be the case. Here are some subject lines taken from the first 10 (there's a lot more) unrelated senders in the 'conversation':

- commitment letter
- prepayment question
- mortgage renewal
- follow up for outstanding conditions
- 2nd mortgage renewal
- new to Canada question
- Niagara Falls | Lakeside Ontario | All-Inclusive Caribbean | Michigan Water Park | 4-Star Virginia
- mortgage info
- platinum renewal
- Monday Rate Sheet - New Lower 5 Year Rates!

Most of them are quite a bit different. One thing I did notice though, is ALL of them have the word 'mortgage' in the body of the email in one spot or another. In one of them it is only in my signature in my response to them. There are others have the word 'mortgage' in the body of the message as well, so while I was thinking this was it, now i'm back to thinking I have no clue. haha

 

[MacInWin]

But do they all start with "2nd mortgage..." and then add those other words? If so, that's the link

The body really doesn't matter. The grouping is done by subject line, as far as I can tell.