False Positive Junk Not Returning to Folders
How can I tell Thunderbird to return false positive "junk" e-mails to their original folders?
My e-mail-server was moved to another provider. I set up a new IMAP account in Thunderbird 128.7.0esr. It downloaded my emails and falsely marked 7,298 (seven thousand!) emails as "junk" and moved them to the relevant folder. 1 (one) email was correctly marked as junk.
I have marked all 7,298 messages as "not junk". However, they just sit there. They are not being returned to their original folders.
According to https://blog.thunderbird.net/2024/09/thunderbird-and-spam/ the should automatically return to their proper folders. But that is not happening.
That's a problem, as they are from many different folders. Inbox, Sent, Archives, group boxes, drafts, you name it.
What to do?
All Replies (3)
You appear to be assuming it's Thunderbird who marked those messages as junk, which I have a hard time believing is what happened. The junk filter is applied to incoming messages, not to messages already on the server. And if it was Thunderbird who did it, it would not have marked as junk messages for which the sender is in your address book, according to your settings. Did those messages have the banner saying "Thunderbird thinks this message is junk mail" or were they just moved to the Junk folder without being really marked as junk?
My e-mail-server was moved to another provider.
It's unclear to me what does this mean… How was your mail moved from the old provider to the new one?
Thank you. Yes, I am sure Thunderbird marked these emails as Junk. My address book is empty, so the related Thunderbird setting does not help with anything. So I have turned that setting off.
The server admin set up a process of moving all messages to the new provider. I was not privy to that process, but it took a couple of hours, and I was required to set up a new IMAP account. I did this on two machines, and everything was fine (a laptop with Thunderbird and a phone with K9). The messages all retained their state (read or unread, some flagged, etc.).
After a few days, I took the opportunity to start using a virgin Thunderbird installation on a desktop computer where I had not used Thunderbird before. That Thundebird installation had to download all messages anew, and while doing so, filtered 7,299 of them erroneously as Junk into the folder I had specified in the settings.
This even includes messages I have sent myself.
How do I get them back?
Modified by bugzilla7
Someone else may know better, but I don't think you'll be able to get them back other than by moving them yourself manually or using message filters.
You talk about the messages being originally in folders, but Thunderbird would only have marked as junk messages that were in Inbox, not in those other folders. What you described sounds very strange to me. Something doesn't compute here…
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