My Hotmail account has a Junk folder that works with the filters applied on the Hotmail site before the mail is accessed by TB. 'Before junk classification' only works for mail subject to TB's junk controls, but not controls applied at the server. Does that apply to your case?

Hi sfhowes,

Thank you for your reply. Yes, my Hotmail/Outlook account also has a junk folder which any emails that aren't on my safe senders list go into. I can relax the settings in Outlook, but the spam emails that I want rid of will always go straight to junk.

The issue I have is other email being junked as well so I always have to wade through the spam in order to find it. The spam is usually from the same few sources, but Outlook unhelpfully only applies their rules to email in the inbox and does not allow filtering by sender using "contains" like Thunderbird does.

If I change the setting to 'After junk classification' will that make a difference? If I manually apply the filter I have created it works perfectly - it got rid of all five spam emails that had arrived overnight.

Many Thanks, Paul Lucas

Not sure I understand the complete setup. Are you applying TB's Junk Controls or just relying on Outlook's controls and your own filters in TB? Remember that TB's filters only work automatically on the Inbox, although a filter can be manually applied to any folder. So if a message is sent to the Junk folder, a TB filter doesn't affect that folder automatically, but it can if the filter's applied manually.

Hi sfhowes,

I was hoping the TB filters would apply automatically to all folders. This is the same issue I am having with Outlook where 'rules' only apply to the inbox so I can't filter out all the offensive stuff from the junk folder without having to go through it manually.

The TB filter does make a significant advance in that it allows filtering by 'contains', which in effect allows for a wildcard filter, whereas with Outlook you have to enter the exactly domain.

The manual application of the TB filter then allows for a complete clear out of all the known spammers in one hit and should leave any genuine emails. It also goes straight to deleted, which is the equivalent of emptying the deleted folder, which in Outlook requires two clicks.

It is such a shame that a feature that can be applied manually cannot be applied automatically to the junk folder. Is there a reason for this? How do I go about requesting this as a future feature improvement?

Oddly though, this afternoon, any spam emails coming to my junk folder that have met the criteria in my block list filter have been deleted from my junk folder without me running the filter manually. I am not sure how this is possible given what you say?

Many Thanks, Paul Lucas

There is a bug report that mentions changing (or adding) a preference that enables automatic filtering for all folders, but that is far from defining automatic filters for specific folders:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=428574

Thanks,

It seems to be running the filter as soon as I click on the junk folder, because it updates the 'number unread' next to the folder and the spam emails are visible for a brief second until they are almost immediately removed into the deleted folder, which then has a 'number unread' next to it until I click on that folder and they have been emptied.

Thunderbird does not poll the junk or the deleted folders for new mail when it checks for new mail. You can enable that by right clicking the folders, select properties and then the appropriate option.

Most folks really don't want to be seeing changes to those folders unless they specifically click on the folders, which is when they are normally polled for changes.

Hi Matt,

Thank you for your reply.

Can I check that you mean junk > properties > general information > when getting new messages for this account, always check this folder > ticked?

Many Thanks, Paul Lucas

that I do mean junk > properties > general information > when getting new messages for this account, always check this folder > ticked?