Junk mail stopped working

I’m using the newest Em Client 7.2.35595.0 from May 2019.  I noticed no mail is going to my Junk mail folder. So I uninstalled and reinstalled EM Client yesterday, rebooted, and the same thing is happening. How can I reset my Junk Mail folder or get this to work again? When I reinstalled I kept my database intact, so I’m wondering if I need to delete a database file to fix this.

Did you setup blacklists for moving spam to the Junk folder?

I’m not exactly sure what you mean by me setting up blacklists. What I’ve always done is when I get a spam email in my inbox. I click on “move to Junk” and choose the middle option: Move to junk and blacklist email. You may remember me as the one who got the message to update and it ended up being an internal build not released to the public. 

So I uninstalled that and reinstalled the 5/16/19 version. After installing I noticed that it wasn’t using my Junk folder at all. I had lots of emails to add to it. There were so many I just deleted them. I closed and reopened EM Client with the same results.  I uninstalled and reinstalled again with the same results.

Today after I left the forum post, I went ahead and saw your message and selected a bunch of new emails and this time sent them to junk choosing the middle option, After I did that, I saw that 2 emails did go to junk automatically and now 1 more has also. 

It appears that my junk mail list has been deleted and I’m starting all over. Do you think that’s the case? Or do I need to change something in Settings?

About 3 weeks ago it seems my junk mail list was cleared and I had to start all over with marking the junk mail, in time it got better. If you can give me some info in where the junk mail files are saved I could replace a bad file with an older one, since I back up those files nightly.

Also if there are junk mail settings I can adjust, let me know I don’t see anything that controls the junk except possibly “Rules” in the settings. Whatever info you can give will be appreciated

By right-click and choosing to blacklist, you add the sender’s details to your blacklist Rule. You can find that in Menu > Tools > Rules. It should be ticked to work.

If you delete your database, you delete the blacklist you have previously used.

eM Client doesn’t have any algorithm for detecting spam. It can only apply the blacklist Rule or the spam Rule to incoming messages. The later searches the message header for spam values added by your email server.

The best option is to use your server’s spam detection, and let it move messages to the Junk folder for you. If you are using IMAP then that folder will appear in your folder tree. If you are using POP3, you will not see those spam messages in eM Client.

Useful info. So I guess the big question is why my blacklist seems to have been cleared and which file in my database has that info.

 Next time my blacklist is abruptly cleared I can replace that file with the one from my backup from the previous day. If so, can you tell me the name of the file?

  1. If you have regular backups, then Rules will be included. The problem with backups is that you cannot selectively restore individual items. A restore will replace the whole database. 

  2. You can manually export the Rules in Menu > File > Export > Export settings to xml.

That is the best way, because you can import that file back into eM Client and it will not replace what is there. It will just add to the existing Rules.

  1. You can copy the rules.dat file from your database directory, but eM Client needs to be closed to do that otherwise you will have an empty file. Copying that file back to a database will replace all the existing Rules.

Thanks for your excellent suggestions. In a week or 2 I’ll start saving the exported Rules, so if this happens again I can just import the good Rules.