> no longer seems to be able to find my local.cf (see another thread on this > forum).
local.cf seems to have moved around in various installs on various platforms. Search around and see if there is a default local.cf in some other directory, perhaps /etc/mail/spamassassin. Your problem with the reporting format is due to the setting of "report_safe", I believe. That is usually set in local.cf, so the inability to find your old local.cf file may be resulting in SA defaulting to a different reporting option. Loren