The "Unread" Smart Mailbox now includes unread Junk email

Question

Level 1

17 points

The "Unread" Smart Mailbox now includes unread Junk email

Starting sometime recently - not sure when but in the past month or two - the Smart Mailbox "Unread" in Apple's built-in Mail App began including junk mail. This appears to only happen to mail sent to my iCloud account (relevant because others have posted that this issue can be fixed by changing the IMAP prefix, but you can't do that with the iCloud account). Obviously this defeats the whole purpose of the smart mail filtering and the junk mail filtering. 90% of my unread mail is really junk. This never used to happen, so I presume it is a glitch from an update. But I can find no settings to address this. Any ideas?

Monterey 12.6.3

MacBook Pro

Posted on Feb 28, 2023 10:34 AM

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Answer 1

bailier

Community Specialist

Mar 2, 2023 09:10 AM in response to dhp317

Hello dhp317,

Here are few things you can do to reduce spam in iCloud Mail:

1.) Report junk mail

2.) Mark legitimate emails as not junk

3.) Don't open suspected junk mail

4.) Adjust your Mail Privacy Protection settings

5.) use an iCloud email alias or Hide My Email

More specific details can be found in this article: Report and reduce spam in iCloud Mail - Apple Support

Take care!

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Answer 2

karina184

Community Specialist

Mar 2, 2023 09:32 AM in response to dhp317

Hey dhp317,

Got it. Thanks for clearing that up. Can you double-check those settings for the Smart Mailbox and make sure that the option include messages from Trash is not selected? Having this deselected should prevent the issue you're seeing. Here's some more information on checking the settings if you'd like to refer to it: Use Smart Mailboxes in Mail on Mac - Apple Support. Keep us updated.

Cheers!

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Answer 3

dhp317 Author

Level 1

17 points

Mar 2, 2023 09:15 AM in response to bailier

I very much appreciate that you responded. But my question had nothing to do with reducing junk mail or marking this as junk mail. The junk mail already goes in to the junk folder. The issue is that NOW, unread junk mail from the junk folder shows up in the Smart Mailbox, "Unread". This never used to happen and sort of defeats the purpose of junk and the smart folder.

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Answer 4

dhp317 Author

Level 1

17 points

Mar 2, 2023 10:44 AM in response to karina184

Thanks again for trying to help out. I appreciate it! It is still set to exclude trash. But, even though I had checked these settings before, it occurred to me that I could ADD an "And Not in Mailbox . . . Junk" condition to the Smart settings. I've just done that and I'll see how that works.

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