Slightly odd behaviour

I’ve labelled this as General Discussion, rather than as a problem, because it is more of a minor nuisance.
Background: because of compatibility problems between Sky e-mail and Windows, I’ve switched to Gmail. But I was reluctant to give up Thunderbird as my e-mail software, and it integrates well with Gmail. For the most part…
It seems that the Gmail ‘Inbox’ is really just a label. Mails actually reside in the ‘All Mail’ folder, but Gmail tags incoming ones so that they appear in the ‘Inbox’. New messages (if unread) are highlighted in bold. Except that this sometimes goes awry.
In my case, it seems to be the automatic notifications from iSpot forum that don’t appear. The Inbox shows that there is a new message with a numeric tag -
image -
but the message isn’t displayed in the list, bold font or otherwise. I have to go to the ‘All Mail’ window (which will be similarly tagged when this happens, not otherwise) to see and read it. For some reason, Gmail doesn’t ‘see’ an Inbox label in Forum e-mails.
I have absolutely no idea why. It’s not really a problem, now I understand that it happens; and I don’t expect there is a ‘fix’. But I thought it might be of interest to the technical gurus.

I use Thunderbird myself but that’s with POP or IMAP servers - never used it for gmail. I just have a forwarder on my rarely-used gmail account.

If you drag the iSpot email into the inbox, does it learn? I have used gmail since I retired and can no longer use my work email address. I’ve not had any significant problems with it but I don’t like its tendency to try and take control of all my data - and my phone. You soon discover that it is tracking your physical movements as well as all your on-line activity; storing your passwords and probably a lot of other things, too.
My wife has gmail and a lot of her mail goes into ‘promotions’ which none of mine does. So it’s all a bit confusing.
I find it quite useful, though, as a means of backing up all my photos. But I’ve never allowed it to synchronise my photo folders with those on my PC as I don’t want it downloading lots of other data from my PC. Am I being paranoid?

That’s worth investigating, thanks.
I am acutely aware of Google’s close interest in my doings - one reason why I prefer other search engines. But, since we seem to be stuck with one pay-to-use e-mail provider, I am sticking it out.

Not sure if this is quite right but you should be able to set it so that iSpot Forums appear in your ‘important’ inbox. Also, if you need to, you can either search by “iSpot Forum” or search by “sent from: [email protected]
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The best way to get it into your inbox, however, is to create a filter. If you go into Quick Settings, then Settings, then Filters and Blocked Addresses, there will be a little blue bit that says “create new filter”. When you press it, it comes up like this:


Make sure you put [email protected] in the From: section. Then, don’t press the alluring blue “search” button - make sure you press “create filter” instead.
Then, you will get this screen come up:

You can select on there where you want Emails from iSpot to go. You can then make sure it always goes into Primary by pressing this:

You could also check “always mark as important” if you want them to specifically go to your importants folder.
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Doing this SHOULD fix the problem. Mine usually go into “promotions” or “social” which you can also turn off entirely in Settings!
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In case it is sensitive depending on how your general quick settings are, mine is on Density: Compact, Inbox type: Default and Reading Pane: No Split. If you wanted, you could change your Inbox type to “Important First” and mark iSpot as automatically important using a filter if you don’t want it going into your Primary inbox in case it gets cluttered (which mine does, I currently have 1,380 unread emails in Primary…).
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I hope this helps and, if not, just tell me! I’m not a tech guru sadly but I can try my best lol!

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Many thanks for this!
For someone whose MSc dissertation was all about linking computers (BBC B’s back then!) to lab equipment, I am now hopelessly out of touch with IT.
As Sod’s Law predicts, the issue hasn’t arisen again since I posted the original. but I will copy-and-paste this into my notes programme for easy reference.
It savvy, friend to hedgehogs, finder of intriguing little critters: you’re the biz!

I know what you mean about IT moving on. When I learned to use a computer it was Fortran IV and holes punched in cards!

And a computer was a device for turning input into error messages.

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One of the huge strengths of the BBC series of computers was the easy access to a range of i/o channels and protocols. I’m not sure it hasa been surpassed by any general-purpose machine since then. It could be argued that USB comes close … if you can find a cable with the correct pair of plugs.

Oh, yes - I expect a few will remember “bad command or filename”.

We used to have “syntax errors” too :exploding_head:

I think that MS Excel still gives ‘syntax errors’ - although I haven’t used it recently.

A bit of nostalgia:
C AREA OF A TRIANGLE WITH A STANDARD SQUARE ROOT FUNCTION
C INPUT - TAPE READER UNIT 5, INTEGER INPUT
C OUTPUT - LINE PRINTER UNIT 6, REAL OUTPUT
C INPUT ERROR DISPLAY ERROR OUTPUT CODE 1 IN JOB CONTROL LISTING
READ INPUT TAPE 5, 501, IA, IB, IC
501 FORMAT (3I5)
C IA, IB, AND IC MAY NOT BE NEGATIVE OR ZERO
C FURTHERMORE, THE SUM OF TWO SIDES OF A TRIANGLE
C MUST BE GREATER THAN THE THIRD SIDE, SO WE CHECK FOR THAT, TOO
IF (IA) 777, 777, 701
701 IF (IB) 777, 777, 702
702 IF (IC) 777, 777, 703
703 IF (IA+IB-IC) 777, 777, 704
704 IF (IA+IC-IB) 777, 777, 705
705 IF (IB+IC-IA) 777, 777, 799
777 STOP 1
C USING HERON’S FORMULA WE CALCULATE THE
C AREA OF THE TRIANGLE
799 S = FLOATF (IA + IB + IC) / 2.0
AREA = SQRTF( S * (S - FLOATF(IA)) * (S - FLOATF(IB)) *
+ (S - FLOATF(IC)))
WRITE OUTPUT TAPE 6, 601, IA, IB, IC, AREA
601 FORMAT (4H A= ,I5,5H B= ,I5,5H C= ,I5,8H AREA= ,F10.2,
+ 13H SQUARE UNITS)
STOP
END

Another outbreak of this little gremlin-ette allowed me to try your fix. The process was a little different on my PC. But it WORKED. Blessings be upon you!