I set-up "Options" to send me a held mail report once weeekly. I don't get SPAM, (lucky) but wanted to know those occasions when something ended up there so it didn't get deleted w/o my knowing. I suppose the report would show what's in there


However all I see is just like this guys post: 2004

here's mine:
Held Mail Report for gok75[[attt]]spamcop.net
<http://webmail.spamcop.net>

Report spam:
<http://mailsc.spamcop.net/reportheld?action=heldlog>

1) anyone get these links to work by clicking? I think the <> disables the hypertext feature

2) anyone see a true list of mail

And as compared to a couple shown over in http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=4132


I'm confused. I copied off a copy of what Jeff G. offered up as a sample, saved it as an .eml file, opened it up with OE, and these links "are" clickable ...???? and this is with an OE that is set up securely ....


Umm, as above, the other Topic/Discussion has some content by some other folks with some issue with the data included in that report ...????

Whoa Waz, you're off topic! Why compare my Webmail interface (via Netscape 7 on OS X) to a MAIL CLIENT? Shame shame shame
However, using your examples, I could actually point and click on the links in this one: in #4132 Lets figure out why it works but my Webmail message doesn't.

And this was the real need for help. If they are getting some content in the Held Mail Report, why don't I? (although they get garbage messages of binary files)

I got another empty Held Mail Report this morning. There should have been about 117 items on it.

I got another empty Held Mail Report this morning. There should have been around a hundred items on it.

Just to note, I enabled mine last night and this mornings report contained the same 4 spams I had in Held mail so this is not a universal problem, maybe there is a limit problem, however. (I am not receiving much spam since I dropped my spammy address last month).

Pretty strange times myself .. after losing that 9 year old HotMail account, the lack of spam got me to using some Forum PM notifications for samples to run through the parser (working on GMail issues and those are gong to a GMail account)

I got another empty Held Mail Report this morning. There should have been about 131 items on it.

My Held Mail Report usually lists all the spam in my Held Mail folder, with two (reasonable) exceptions:

1. Often a lot of spam has arrived between the time when the Held Mail Report was sent and when I read it. This spam is obviously not included in the report.

2. Messages that are "old" or have been "touched" are not included in the report. I am not exactly sure what triggers this exclusion (date stamp? read/unread status?), but it seems that the report only contains virgin spam that was put into the Held Mail folder by SpamCop the previous day.

Now that you mention it, I have seen the same phenonenon. I know that any messages viewed in VER are automatically marked as read in the webmail view. I also believe I have seen that read mesages are not on the report. I am not sure, because I have never left messages long enough (I will try with tomorrows report), if a message will show on 2 consecutive reports. In other words, it is possible that once a report includes a specific spam, that the specific messagfe is not included again.

The only way that spam arriving overnight into my Held Mail mailbox/Folder is "touched" is by the SpamCop Email System and by my OE checking via IMAP. I will try stopping that particular check tonight.

I left two spams in my Held Mail folder last night which I had viewed both in VER and in OE via IMAP. I had left one marked as "read" and had set the other one back to "unread" in OE yesterday.

This morning I received an empty Held Mail Report. My Held Mail folder contains three spams. One arrived after the report was sent, so no surprise that it is not included. The other two were not included even though they both arrived after yesterday's Held Mail Report and before today's Held Mail Report, and even though I had marked one as "unread" yesterday.

That means that my previous guesses about what causes non-inclusion (time stamp, read/unread status) are both wrong.

I got another empty Held Mail Report this morning. There should have been about 73 items on it. I logged out of Webmail just before I went to sleep, but left OE running. I'll try exiting from both before I go to sleep tonight.

I left 1 message marked read in the Held Mail box and received a report with only the 3 new messages in it. I have now left the read one and one unread one in the Held mail to see what happens tomorrow.

Jeff: Does your OE touch the Held Mail folder on the spamcop servers? That could explain the difference. If you view your Held Mail from within Webmail, are the entries showing in bold (unread)?

Yes, it does read that mailbox/Folder on a timed basis.Yes, they stay bold/unseen (unread) until I apply my filters, all of which include "Mark message as: Seen".

So that could be causing the difference in what I am seeing and your results.

And obviously it is NOT as simple as them being marked read or not in the folder.

Unfortunately, I have a feeling something in the message must change (last accessed date or similiar) to cause the report not to "see" the messages. Meaning this will probably require some reworking of the report generation code to fix.

Shreff: Do you have anything accessing the Held Mail folder, similar to Jeff?

Yesterday I emptied my Held Mail folder using VER and then did not access VER anymore for the rest of the day. In the evening, I once accessed the Held Mail folder using OE via IMAP. At that time, there were two spams in my Held Mail folder. I allowed OE to mark one as read, but left the other one in its virgin state.

This morning I received a Held Mail Report with four entries. I opened my Held Mail folder in OE via IMAP and it contained eight spams. Two of them had arrived after the Held Mail Report was sent, so no surprise there. The four that were included in the report had arrived after I last accessed the Held Mail Folder in OE last night. The two that had already been in my Held Mail folder last night were not in the Report, although one of the two spams had never been pulled or marked as read by OE.

Based on the foregoing, my current conjecture is that the cut-off for Held Mail Report inclusion is based on the last time the Held Mail folder was accessed. Only spams that arrived after that time are included in the report. Spams that were already present the last time the folder was accessed are not included, even though the message itself was never touched.

Does anybody know what test I could run next to disprove or confirm my current hypothesis? Or maybe someone knows the author of the Held Mail Report scri_pt and could just ask him/her what it does?

My testing agrees with yours, but I used the SpamCop webmail system (which is also IMAP) to view the folder. This would also agree with what Jeff was seeing with OE scanning the Held Folder on a regular basis.

I assume that scri_pt is part of JT's work as the switches are within the webmail system. I am sending him a message now.

The 2 questions I asked:

Can you confirm how the messages are selected to be included in this report? Also, if a common idea emerges about a different way to select the messages (since last report, last 24 hours, etc.) would you be willing to make that change?

I can confirm a similar experience. Last night, before going to bed, I logged out of Webmail and configured my OE6 to not "Include this account [imap.spamcop.net] when receiving mail or synchronizing". I then got a Held Mail Report with approx. 85 entries, the same number of messages that arrived in my Held Mail mailbox/Folder between bedtime and 5am EDT. Since Webmail accesses the mail via IMAP, I'd venture to say that the messages detailed in the Held Mail Report are those that have arrived in the Held Mail mailbox/Folder between the last IMAP access to it and 5am EDT. That may change to ET (Atlanta local time) in the Fall.

Jeff's reply:

> From our testing, it seems that the Daily Held Report will only show messages
> which arrive after the last time the folder was accessed.

That's correct, and should be the documented behavior somewhere.

> This seems to be
> causing some people problems when they configure IMAP clients to search that
> folder for false positives on a regular basis, causing the report to come back
> empty all the time.
>

If they are looking at the emails via IMAP, they shouldn't need a report
emailed to them.

> Can you confirm how the messages are selected to be included in this report?
> Also, if a common idea emerges about a different way to select the messages
> (since last report, last 24 hours, etc.) would you be willing to make that
> change?

Only if it makes sense. The idea is that the report doesn't grow without
bound. My idea was that if you logged in and looked through the
messages, you wouldn't need to see those any more.

The number of users using IMAP program to automatically filter their
Held Mail is vanishingly small. For most users, the held mail report
grows until they reset it, which is a very simple action.

Jeff

OK, I'll bite, anyone have a list of such programs, preferably free and for Windows? Thanks!

Doesn't OE do this? I assumed that is what your OE was doing accessing the Held mail folder continuously, looking for specific wanted emails you could not whitelist for one reason or another.

IMAPFilter does this. It's free, but not for Windows.

You can probably do it with rules and macros in Microsoft Outlook. For Windows, but not free.

No, OE doesn't filter IMAP or Hotmail, it can only filter POP.

OK, gotta ask then...Why do you normally have OE checking the Held Mail folder all night. You said when you turned off this check, that the report came back with the links. I had assumed you were using filters to look for false postitive messages int he Held Mail folder.

I like to have my mail available for review locally in case of any sort of disruption, day or night.

Dang, so many tests. And VER is still an unknown thing to many of us. All I wanted was a way to get a notice if I have held mail.

So, are there really that many bugs? And since I am not one using a client to read my SC account mail, I guess the only way to get a valid report is to never look in the Held Mail folder betweeen scheduled report dates.
Am not sure on this, but am not checking folder either. Regardless, I sure believe I've gotten blank reports even though have not looked in folder since mail arrived there. Very screwy indeed.

Conclusion, HELD MAIL reports don't work.

...My conclusion would be: Held Mail reports don't work as some people expect.
...Have you considered a New Feature Request? <g>

Webmail is an IMAP4 Client. VER is also an IMAP4 Client of sorts. Having any IMAP4 Client check your Held Mail mailbox/Folder will cause the mail that was checked not to be considered "New" any more, for purposes of the Held Mail Report, so it will not be included in that Report.