PSA: Apple Mail Incorrectly Parses Addresses in Signatures as Missing Recipients

[beatrixwillius]

I did a bug report at the end of August:

"Follow up" in Mail decides on it's own what it wants to do. Some days ago I sent an email to a customer. Today the email shows up with "Follow up" in my Inbox. I did NOT use follow up.

This now happens every couple of days. What is Apple's reaction? "Investigation complete - works as designed".

 

[klasma]

I think it's worse than this. I'm getting bugged when I merely mention another email address in a message, because Mail thinks that address should be a recipient too? WHY? I often want to mention another email address but not include them as a recipient. There really ought to be configurable rules around all this...

Yeah, I totally don’t get why that is a feature, it would be a false positive most of the time.

 

[beatrixwillius]

Yeah, I totally don’t get why that is a feature, it would be a false positive most of the time.

Mentioning another email address does not trigger the bug.

 

[klasma]

Mentioning another email address does not trigger the bug.

I don’t mean the bug. I mean what the other poster I responded to wrote, that mentioning an email address in the text of an email message does not in any way imply that that address is intended to be a recipient of the message.

 

[ctg7w6]

I absolutely do not understand why half the replies here are about why someone would have their email in their signature block.

First of all, while I don't do it, it is helpful to me. I use Outlook and on Mac you have to oddly double-click or something on the person's name in the From field to get their email address, then it is not really that easy to copy the address. It is very annoying, but Outlook is great for everything else, so I don't really complain.

Secondly, it's not really on-topic. This is about Apple's bug. I don't know if people questioning the signature block email are doing it because they are baffled or they are Apple apologists.

The problem that we have seen over the past few years is buggy Apple software. Nobody worries about little bugs here and there, especially on new software. It happens. No dev team is perfect. But we see stupid, easily fixable, easily discovered bugs in standard, old Apple software. Sure, the Apple mail client sucks, but this is the bare minimum kind of email client. It is a standard feature of operating systems for decades now. Why can't Apple get anything right?

I understand changing out standard OS software to get better third-party solutions. Its unconscionable that in 2022 I do not use the Mail app because it does not have basic features (I'm no longer speaking about just the bug) or that it has simple bugs that should not exist with rudimentary testing (now I am talking about the bug again).

Get it together Apple. Take a year to sort yourself out. We don't need new operating systems every year or huge new features that add minimally to our lives. Like stage manager. Neat idea. Wish I had a real reason to use it. But I don't. Would've loved the dev time to go from stage manager into something like Apple Mail.

 

[Alwis]

Get it together Apple. Take a year to sort yourself out. We don't need new operating systems every year or huge new features that add minimally to our lives. Like stage manager. Neat idea. Wish I had a real reason to use it. But I don't. Would've loved the dev time to go from stage manager into something like Apple Mail.

That sums up Ventura for me, no new feature I am excited about or which I will even use regulary, but a lot of new bugs and removed functionality.

I do understand, that they can not revolutionize the OS every year, but there is no need to. Just iron out all the little bugs for a year or two.

I think for a starter Apple should separate updates of the build in apps from the OS. No need to update the OS to fix bugs in Mail or add some small festure to photos.

 

[TheMacDaddy1]

I am shocked people use this app or iCloud email. Both have always been unreliable compared to other free options.

 

[1885507]

Not seeing the issue here. I've had this pop-up come through a few times but it was easily ignored. I'd rather have it being extra careful and double-checking than simply ignoring things altogether.

 

[terrapinjess]

The time new Apple features were well thought out in every detail is truly behind us.

Now we get horrors like Focus Modes: basically Apple giving up and saying “here, do it yourself, we can’t figure it out”.

I think the whole Focus mode thing is one of my most favorite new features of the last few years. The option to integrate it with Shortcuts and lock screens and this and that are really appreciated.
Oh well, you really can't please everyone.

I will say though, the tried an true quality we've all come to know from Apple seems to have taken a steep drop-off recently. I used to buy with confidence knowing things would work better than most other devices. Recently, they seem on par with the best of the worst now. I know things are still going to work and be quality with Apple but not as good as they used to be. I suppose that's just the nature of a growing business and having to keep track of everything - services, features, bugs, fixes, apps, software, different hardware... it's becoming out of control clearly. Time to slim it all down and get back to basics and get it under control again.

 

[Adreitz]

The only use I can see for including your own email in your signature is if you are important enough in your organization for someone else to send an email on your behalf or for it to be automatically routed through some other account (e.g. Sales@XXX or Info@XXX).

However, this Mail "feature" doesn't make ANY sense to me. If I forget to add a recipient to the To: field, I'm not going to type that email address into the body of the email! It's just not going to be there at all. I don't understand the sequence of events that would have to happen for this functionality to solve an actual issue. Is it just supposed to address times when you hit Reply instead of Reply All?

 

[tufapshakur]

What's the idea to add own e-mail to signature if it is already in the "From" field?

Almost everyone is capable of reading an email address in a signature. You'd be surprised how many people are incapable of gathering an email address from the From field. Since the signature often includes other pieces of contact information, its logical to include an email address there too.

 

[Tagbert]

What's the idea to add own e-mail to signature if it is already in the "From" field?

In subsequent replies in an ongoing thread, people can get added or removed. This keeps the email address available within the email body. It’s not a major feature, but pretty common to add it as part of the signature that identifies you. Some people use that to create a contact card for that person.

 

[duervo]

Ok. That one is a pretty bad mistake. Even with factoring in hindsight. Laughable that QA teams didn’t think to test the feature with an email that had a signature in it. That’s a very common case.

 

[m_emelchenkov]

Almost everyone is capable of reading an email address in a signature. You'd be surprised how many people are incapable of gathering an email address from the From field. Since the signature often includes other pieces of contact information, its logical to include an email address there too.

In my youth, we felt sorry for people who take selfies. Because that meant they didn't have any friends who could take pictures of them. Now selfies have become a way of self-expression. Unfortunately, you are right—a lot of people who are very far from computers are trying to use technologies that require basic tech. education (if you know what RTFM means). Another question is whether it is worth communicating with such people? Probably shouldn't judge them for that, but it looks sad nonetheless.

 

[jib2]

This bug is not universal. I have sent numerous emails using Ventura's Mail which included my email address in the signature, and none of them have gotten me a message suggesting that I include it as a recipient. So there is more to it than simply that.

 

[compwiz1202]

Some people still print emails, or forward them to other people and not always is the 'From' field preserved in this context. It makes sense to have your address embedded in the signature.

Or like someone said you can just quick click that and send a new mail that doesn't relate to the current one

 

[HQuest]

Just another bug with the Mail app I too reported back in early August. Another fun one: on a traditional email account (not iCloud, not GMail, not Exchange), if you tap “select all” but remove selection of some of your messages, and you tap any action such as move or trash, watch all your messages to be affected, including those you unchecked. Select All takes precedence.

 

[eyez73]

Personally I don't get why people put their email address in their email footers. It's in the mail header, if I need / want it that's where I'll find it.

I deal with a lot of very basic users, they wouldn't know where to find it in the header.

 

[coolfactor]

Parsing email addresses is pretty reliable these days, and given that Mail is prefixing his signature's email address with "FM(space)" in the alert suggests that it thinks that is part of the email address. That then leads me to think maybe that (space) is a non-breaking space thereby causing the confusion... maybe? I'd re-write the signature to see if the problem goes away. Sometimes formatting issues can be invisible to the human eye.

 

[m_emelchenkov]

Issues with signature formatting in Mail.app is a nightmare, honestly.

 

[milhaus]

This bug is not universal. I have sent numerous emails using Ventura's Mail which included my email address in the signature, and none of them have gotten me a message suggesting that I include it as a recipient. So there is more to it than simply that.

Lol, it's worse than that. I only sometimes get this error when I send email, even with the same signature in the email body. So it's definitely something more that just that.

 

[reeney]

Actually the same thing happens of you have an email in the text of your message. Perhaps you are telling John that Steve's email, address is.... It suggests that you want to send the message to Steve also.

 

[miles8888]

If everyone on this thread reports this, we may see a fix sooner:

Feedback - Mail - Apple

 

[SnappleRumors]

Personally I don't get why people put their email address in their email footers. It's in the mail header, if I need / want it that's where I'll find it.

What's the idea to add own e-mail to signature if it is already in the "From" field?

Good lord. An email can contain many recipients and recipients can add and remove other recipients or forward the email onto others.

A signature block is a quick and easy way to determine how to contact someone. Does anyone actually work in an office?

 

[CoMoMacUser]

A signature block is a quick and easy way to determine how to contact someone. Does anyone actually work in an office?

I've telecommuted full time for 22 years, and I agree that a sig block is useful.