Messages come into Inbox with different category from sender's category assigned in Address Book

[wallacestuart]

Mac OS 10.4.8
Microsoft Entourage 2004 for Mac version 11.2.5 (060620)
POP account

New email messages which come in from email addresses which:

1. appear in a contact in my Entourage Address Book and
2. have a category assigned there

have recently begun arriving to the Inbox with incorrectly assigned
categories. All these messages are assigned both the first
category in my list of categories (wrongly) and additionally the
category which I assigned to the appropriate contact in the Address
Book (correctly). When I look at the incoming mail messages, the
Inbox's preview pane displays virtually all the new messages with text
only in the color that is assigned to the first category (in my list of
categories). The only new email messages that appear in a different
color (black) are the messages which were sent using email addresses
which do NOT appear in any contact in my Address Book or which do
appear in my Address Book but have NO category assigned.

It may be a coincidence, but this all started soon after I started
synchronizing contacts in my Entourage Address Book with cards in Apple
Address Book via both synch functions in both Entourage and Apple
Address Book/.Mac.

In an attempt to fix the problem, I have run Software Update, run
Repair Disk Permissions, rebuilt Entourage's index, and ran Tiger Cache
Cleaner's "Maintain" functions -- Repair Permissions, Rebuild
Prebindings, and Clean System Log Archives. I did NOT go to
~/Users/wallacestuart/Library/Preferences and throw away
com.microsoft.Entourage.plist or
com.microsoft.entourage.syncservices.plist.

Has anyone else experienced this problem or recognize the cause of this
problem? If so, what other fixes should I try in order to restore
correct assignment of categories to incoming email?

 

[Allen Watson]

I've seen a problem that is at least related to this, in which messages get
an incorrect category assigned. If there is a rule that assigns a category,
and that category gets deleted, the rule may start assigning the default
category (first in the list). I'm not entirely certain this is related to
your problem, but I can at least confirm that Entourage sometimes assigns
the incorrect category.

I'd try checking all your rules to make sure you are not referencing any
obsolete categories there.

 

[wallacestuart]

Allen,

Thanks for you idea. I checked my rules for Entourage and find that I
have only one -- to move junk mail to the Junk E-mail folder. I also
have each message's "status" changed to Junk E-mail. Perhaps this is
redundant as it probably already had it's status changed. In any case,
this rule doesn't seem to be the culprit. However, I'll disable the
rule now and see what happens.

It is interesting that email messages that come from senders who I have
recently added to my address book come in to the Inbox with the correct
category -- matches the category assigned to the Address Book contact.
I recently signed up to receive messages from this Google Group, added
a contact to my address book for it, assigned the contact a category,
and now all email from microsoft.public.mac.office.entourage comes in
with the right category!

Wally Stuart

 

[Mickey Stevens]

Also be sure to check Mailing List Manager entries in Tools > Mailing List
Manager.

If that doesn't help, maybe you should try running this script. It
sometimes helps in these sorts of situations. Copy the script below and
paste it into Script Editor (/Applications/Script Editor). Then, click the
"Run" button. When it's done, see if it helps.

tell application "Microsoft Entourage"
activate
set theContacts to (every contact)
repeat with theContact in theContacts
open theContact
close window 1
end repeat
beep 2
display dialog "All done" buttons {"OK"} default button 1 with icon 1
giving up after 3600
end tell

 

[wallacestuart]

Mickey,

Mailing List Manager, as you suggest, looks like the problem. I have
never had any mailing lists so I've never go there. Some how two lists
were present in Mailing List Manager when I went there. The first list
named "(e-mail address removed)" had as its listed address my email address
"(e-mail address removed)". Checked was "Move messages to folder Inbox (On
My Computer)". Then checked was "Set category: Business", which is
the name of my first category and the category that is assigned to
virtually all messages received in my Inbox. I deleted this mailing
list, hit Send & Receive (email), and into my computer's Inbox came 2
new messages with the correct category assigned. Deletion of the
phantom mailing list seems the solution!

Thank you so much for the suggestion.

Wally Stuart

 

[Barry Wainwright [MVP]]

Those rogue entries are often created when marking a mail item as 'not
junk'. The resultant dialog is misleading, and offers, as one of its
options, to create a 'rule', when it actually creates a MLM entry. The
default settings for that entry are as you describe, which leaves all mail
being sent to your address be directed to the local inbox with no category.