# Thunderbird e-mail client: How long does it take to train the spam filter?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thunderbird-e-mail-client-how-long-does-it-take-to-train-the-spam-filter/725289>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 16, 2015, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thunderbird-e-mail-client-how-long-does-it-take-to-train-the-spam-filter/725289 "2015-07-16T02:49:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\
**Post date:** [July 16, 2015, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thunderbird-e-mail-client-how-long-does-it-take-to-train-the-spam-filter/725289/1 "2015-07-16T02:49:28Z")

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As a Mac user, I’ve been using PowerMail as my e-mail client for more than 15 years. But, it seems that PowerMail hasn’t been updated in a very long time now, and it freezes up and chokes on certain incoming mail now that I’ve upgraded to Yosemite.

So I’ve switched to Thunderbird, and I have one question:

How long do I have to keep training T-bird’s spam filter before it starts automatically sending spam to the Junk folder?

At the moment, T-bird is successfully identifying incoming spam, but it leaves it all in my inbox, so that I have to manually delete it.

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**Author:** ![rsa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/839c29/32.png) [@rsa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rsa)\
**Post date:** [July 16, 2015, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thunderbird-e-mail-client-how-long-does-it-take-to-train-the-spam-filter/725289/2 "2015-07-16T03:34:04Z")

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In your email account settings under “Junk Settings”, make sure that “Move new junk messages to:” is checked under “Destination and Retention.” If you have multiple email accounts, do this for each one. Hope this helps.

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**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\
**Post date:** [July 17, 2015, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thunderbird-e-mail-client-how-long-does-it-take-to-train-the-spam-filter/725289/3 "2015-07-17T12:36:03Z")

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That did the trick. Thanks!