This or variations of it have been asked before but I can’t find a solution anywhere.
Running 8.2.1473
All my new emails are coming in marked as read, i.e. unbolded, all of a sudden.
It’s an IMAP account (to GoDaddy, MS 365) and I only access email on one device. No other device, no webmail access, just the one laptop. Only one account on eM Client.
I used to have it set to ‘Mark messages read after displaying for 5 seconds’ which has always worked perfectly, but no longer.
So I turned that off (i.e. unticked it), knowing it wouldn’t help but hoping for a miracle. No miracle.
‘Mark messages read after opening in separate window’ is also unticked. I’ve never ticked that one.
‘Conversations’ is disabled.
This has only recently started happening and I hadn’t changed any settings for ages before it suddenly started. It started all on its own. Or at least it seemed to.
Any ideas as to where else to look, what else to do? What am I missing?
Oh, I have a feeling there might be a bit of randomness / intermittency to it, like for example sometimes if I open eM Client having not done so for say an hour, and ten new emails come in, on at least one occasion they were all marked as read except for the latest (top) one.
If I wait say ten minutes without doing or touching anything, that top one will also turn to read all on its own.
And on other occasions, if ten come in, they will all be marked as read right from the get-go, including the latest one.
So strange.
Thanks very much.
If your IMAP messages are automatically (marked as read when they arrive) in eM Client, there is normally either another device eg: mobile, table, computer etc configured with the same account, that has read the mailbox before it arrives in eM Client which is the most common reason. So dbl-check all your devices.
Or someone else has access to your mailbox and is remotely reading it without your knowledge. I’ve seen this sort of thing happens with friends family members accessing computers or other devices that still has the account configured to read mail and they are reading the mail without you knowing.
So if you are confident you don’t have any other devices configured to access your mailbox, then advise to “change your mailbox password” incase its being accessed remotely without your knowledge.
Note:- If you update your mailbox password on your mailbox server end, close and reopen eM Client and click “Refresh” and you will shortly get a popup message to enter your new password.
Thanks CZ for taking the time to do such a thorough reply. You’ve covered it all and as you can probably guess I went through all of those steps … changed PW, checked not logged on on other devices etc before posting here. Your suggestions are what I’d say to somebody posting with my question.
But it’s none of those things.
I have confirmed in the past couple of days that it’s nothing to do with eMC as you suggest. But what I’ve determined makes a solution less-likely - MS 365 is doing it all on its own.
365 is changing new emails in the Inbox from Unread to Read at random times, sometimes as short as two minutes, usually around ten minutes and on occasion up to 15.
I’ve sent myself say 8 rapid-fire tests, Test 1, Test 2, Test 3 from an alternative email address, immediately logged on to my 365 account using Outlook Web App, seen all 8 in the Inbox marked as unread, and as I sit there looking at them, after a random time as noted above, they will all instantly at the same time change to Read. So there’s no doubt - it’s MS.
I’ve been trying to fix this for about a week now and what I’ve found in the past few days is that it’s a known problem, goes back a year or more … there’s many posts on it in different places, many of them MS sites or related, but it has never been solved that I can see. All the threads/strings end with MS losing interest / not taking it seriously, and the OP coming back a couple of days later with something like “Anyone? Help” and then that OP also giving up.
Here’s just one of many examples: Outlook 365 is marking emails as read before I open them - Microsoft Community
If all this triggers any further thoughts/ suggestions, love to hear them CZ.
Many thanks.
Meant to add, when I start eMC for the first time in a while, say first thing in the morning, and all, say 15, new emails come in as Read, because they’ve been on MS’s server for more than 10 minutes, I’ll select all and mark them as Unread until I action them.
They stay Unread … forever. They never revert to Read until I mark them as such (or until after the x second timeout I have that seleccted in eMC.)
This puts to bed I think the unauthorised access / multiple devices signed on / password leaked or hacked issue, and indicates, I believe, that MS’s Outlook Web App is doing it, and has been for years if you look at the posts on the issue, and MS hasn’t done a thing about it.
I think this explanation might also go a long way to answering many of the other EmC users who have posted on here about the same issue over the last year or more.
Yes the question is why the emails automatically change to read status after being there for X amount of time on the MS Server without you reading them. There must be settings in the MS Outlook Web Server or App to disable that somewhere to stop that. Hopefully someone on this forum will know.
You could try removing the email account from eM Client and then adding it back again.
If that doesn’t change anything, to help determine where the issue is, add a non-GoDaddy hosted account and see if the same issue is there. If it is not, then the issue is probably related to the provider, rather than any settings in eM Client.
Thanks CZ & Gary, really great to have more minds on this in addition to my frazzled one. The worst part of this issue is the randomness, that others have also noted, on the time-out … sometimes 2 sec, more often than not around 10, sometimes longer. Intermittent faults are the hardest to troubleshoot which might explain why MS forum, MVP’s etc, have given up on the various posts and threads on this over the past year or two. Ditto GoDaddy. What I have absolutely determined now is that eMC is totally innocent of all guilt or suspicions I cast at it when the problem first occurred. It’s 100% MS and/or GoDaddy. Which makes this the wrong forum to be seeking help. Problem is that even though I’m very new to eMC, it seems this is the place to get help even if the fault lies elsewhere. That is outstanding and sets eMC and its community apart. I’ll keep on it and report back with any significant developments, good or bad. Thanks again guys.