OS X :: Mail Bug / Rules Don't Apply To Previously-read Messages
Nov 12, 2010
I just tried to make the switch from Entourage to Mail, but there is a major bug in Mail's handling of rules that has sent me running back to Entourage.
Mail will NOT apply any rules to messages that appear in your inbox, if you've already read those messages on other devices, such as your iPhone.
If you?ve already read an email on another device (such as your iPhone), then Mail will NOT apply ANY incoming rules to that message when it shows up in your inbox. Every other email program on the planet that I know of ? including Entourage and Outlook ? ALWAYS applies rules to messages that appear in your inbox, whether or not you?ve read those messages on other devices.
I really wish that Apple would fix this bug.
Does anybody have any ideas on how to workaround this in the meantime?
All of my email accounts are IMAP accounts.It seems like Mail won't automatically apply rules to new messages that appear in the inbox, if those messages were previously read on another device. It seems like Mail will only apply inbox rules to a new message if it comes in as "unread". For example, if I was reading some email messages in my iPhone's inbox, and then I come home and turn on my Mac and launch Mail, all of those messages show up for the VERY FIRST TIME in Mail's inbox. But none of the rules are applied to those messages, because I've previously read them somewhere else. This seems to be either a bug in Mail, or a poor design choice in Mail. Is there any way to FORCE Mail to apply rules to all incoming messages that appear in the inbox, regardless of whether or not they were previously read on another device?
Info: MacBook Pro (17-inch Mid 2009), Mac OS X (10.7.4), 8 GB RAM, 750 GB HD
I have rules that sort new mail into a number of mailboxes on iCloud, and also copy the mail to similar mailboxes local to my desktop. The rules seem to want the "move" action first, followed by the copy action, as no mater how I enter them, they are rearranged. After I edit a rule and have the destination mailboxes set, they look OK, but then when I revisit the rule after saving, the destination mailboxes are changed. I am not able to get this to work at all consistently. I have about 30 rules to sort incoming mail.
I want to do it this way so that I can get a local copy of my mail and also have a copy in the cloud for viewing with my mobile devices. I eventually delete all the iCloud mail and archive the mail in local folders offline. So it would be nice to be able to get the two copies of new mail in the cloud and locally to work.
Info: MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Yosemite (10.10.1)
I am using OSX Mail and a me.com address, via O2 broadband in the UK. About once a day, Mail, apparenty randomly, reloads dozens of recently read and deleted messages. So, just now for example, I appear to have 68 new messages, and it's all stuff I've dealt with already, some of it is in the InBox and some is filed in other Mailboxes - doesn't seem to make any difference. So now I'm getting duplicates and probably throwing out items I meant to keep.
This is just happening on my desktop iMac and is not replicated on my iPhone or Macbook Air. It feels as if the sync between the iMac and iCloud is somehow corrupting, if that's possible.
This has been going on for a few weeks and so isn't getting better on its own (as I have read in other postings). It also doesn't seem to be linked to any other event. The iMac is on all the time, either in use or asleep, and maybe gets restarted once a week.
I am wary of deleting things from the Library in case I either lose ALL my mail or it decides to replicate every message in the archive.
I have 3 mail accounts (POP), and very often I receive mail that has been sent to the wrong accountI have therefore implemented one rule that has multiple conditions (based on sender, or subject, etc) and basically instructs mail to move said message(s) to account #3 however after I set up the rule, selected my all my messages in acct #1 and ran the rule I noticed that some messages were sent 20 times (I kid you not) to acct #3. How can I isolate a rule so that it only applies to a specific account? Else said, how can I be sure that the rule does not trigger a giant feedback loop?
Is there a way for me to view messages in the preview pane in Mail (i.e., scroll up or down), without having Mail mark the message as "read", unless I actually open the message? If so, can anyone tell me how I can set that option?
I have set up my email account in Entourage and in Mac Mail. It is a Rackspace email account. I can retrieve messages from my email account in both programs. When I read a message in Mac Mail, it immediately disappears after I close the message. The messages remain in my Entourage inbox. In other words, after they are read, POOF! it's as if they never existed in Mac Mail.
Is there a setting I am missing? why this would happen in Mac Mail but not Entourage?
I've been running all of my emails through my iPhone since it was released. Just recently I picked up a new Mac Mini as a work machine, and I set up Mail to handle all of the same accounts as my phone, with the thinking being that I can read and respond to messages when I'm at the computer, and when I step away, be able to read the remaining emails on my iPhone.
What my problem is, however, that both my Gmail and Hotmail accounts don't seem to "sync" properly between the phone and the computer, meaning that mail that I've read or deleted in Mail on the Mac Mini don't show up as being read or deleted on the iPhone, and vice versa.
I don't want to have to delete a message on my phone if I've already taken care of it in Mail.
Wondering if anyone else was having any weird issues with their iCloud and unread count in the Mail app on their mac running lion? I can't seem to get rid of a phantom unread message. My iCloud account is fairly new so I don't have that many messages to go through so I know there is not an unread message any where.
im using Mail to recieve my hotmail messages and im trying to find a way to avoid having a hotmail inbox with hundreds of unread emails since they're all being sent to Mail.
with thunderbird, when the messages are copied from hotmail they are automatically marked as read so when you sign into hotmail or msn you dont recieve a message notifying you of having 500 unread messages...only the amount of unread messages you have in thunderbird.
since ive found a lot of similarities between Mail and thunderbird, surely there's a way to set Mail to behave the same way.
I have a rule that copies an email to the ON MY MAC and then another that MOVES TO A FOLDER in Mobileme. They are in this order. The problem is when I quit Mail the Folder I am copying to is changed to the Mobileme folder so I end up with a duplicate. It doesn't change until Mail is quit. The other odd part, there one arragement like this that did savef at some point and works as expected.
I have tried having both of these rules combined into 1 and have the same results.
Is it possible to use both AND and OR rules with Mail's [mail.app] mail rules? For example in Outlook Express I have a rule which says should: the message body contain ANY of the following words:
one two three four AND the account is <insert account name here> THEN move to <insert folder name here>
However on Mail there seems to only be the option for ANY or ALL and if I apply ANY then it will also move all mail from any account which has the words one, two, three or four, not just from the account I supplied. In additional all other e-mails from the account supplied will be moved as well, even if they don't contain those words.
There is a bug when it comes to rules in Mail in 10.6.4 and 10.6.5 (and possibly earlier versions of Mail as well).
Here are the steps to reproduce the bug:
1. Make sure you have an IMAP account in Mail.
2. In your IMAP account's Mailbox Behaviors, UNCHECK the box that says "Store draft messages on server". This ensures that your draft messages will be saved locally on your Mac instead of on your IMAP server.
3. Create one new rule that would ALWAYS be true of ANY new message that you would be creating in mail, such as: "From contains (your email address)" OR "Sender is a member of group (name of a group that your own card is a part of)" Don't create both of those rules... just choose one.
4. The action that the rule should perform is: "Set Color of text (choose a color)" Make sure that you're NOT setting a BACKGROUND color, but rather that you're setting a TEXT color.
5. Save the rule.
6. Now, create a new message and start typing.
7. Save the message as a draft once.
8. Notice that the message shows up in your Drafts folder with the text color applied that you set in #4 above. This actually is a small bug right there, because rules shouldn't apply to messages in your drafts folder, but this first bug is not a big deal.
9. Continue editing the message.
10. Save the message as a draft for a 2nd time.
11. This is where the major bug takes place. Look in your Drafts folder. Now, your message has shown up in the list of Drafts message with the BACKGROUND COLOR of the subject changed to the TEXT COLOR that you set in #4, which makes the message unreadable if you had chosen a dark text color. Even though you specified a TEXT color, Mail incorrectly applied a BACKGROUND color to the message. This is completely annoying if you're working on a bunch of drafts, because you can't even read the names of the drafts that you're working on without individually opening them up.
My system administrator has convinced me to try OS X Mail rather than Outlook. I believe that Outlook, while having its warts as a mail client (due to its MS heritage), does have a great deal of power that is unappreciated by those who have not used it.
In any case, I am running into some of those limitations. The rules capability appears far more powerful in Outlook.
I need to implement the following rule:
From contains A or B or C Subject contains D or E or F Message contents contains G or H
Can this even be done? I am willing to have multiple rules to unwind the logic, but I am not convinced it will get the same result.
There is a bug when it comes to rules in Mail in 10.6.4 and 10.6.5 (and possibly earlier versions of Mail as well).
Here are the steps to reproduce the bug:
1. Make sure you have an IMAP account in Mail.
2. In your IMAP account's Mailbox Behaviors, UNCHECK the box that says "Store draft messages on server". This ensures that your draft messages will be saved locally on your Mac instead of on your IMAP server.
3. Create one new rule that would ALWAYS be true of ANY new message that you would be creating in mail, such as: "From contains (your email address)" OR "Sender is a member of group (name of a group that your own card is a part of)" Don't create both of those rules... just choose one.
4. The action that the rule should perform is: "Set Color of text (choose a color)" Make sure that you're NOT setting a BACKGROUND color, but rather that you're setting a TEXT color.
5. Save the rule.
6. Now, create a new message and start typing.
7. Save the message as a draft once.
8. Notice that the message shows up in your Drafts folder with the text color applied that you set in #4 above. This actually is a small bug right there, because rules shouldn't apply to messages in your drafts folder, but this first bug is not a big deal.
9. Continue editing the message.
10. Save the message as a draft for a 2nd time.
11. This is where the major bug takes place.... after you've saved your draft for the 2nd time. Look in your Drafts folder. Your message has now shown up in the list of Drafts message with the BACKGROUND COLOR of the subject changed to the TEXT COLOR that you set in #4, which makes the message unreadable if you had chosen a dark text color. Even though you specified a TEXT color, Mail incorrectly applied a BACKGROUND color to the message. This is completely annoying if you're working on a bunch of drafts, because you can't even read the names of the drafts that you're working on without individually opening them up.
A wonderful poductivity app -- Omni Focus, has caused me to Abandon Entourage. I'm loving MacMail, especially after having discovered MailSteward for archiving. But I've got one problem.
I use rules a lot. But I can't figure out how to alphabetize the rules I have so I can edit them. Is there some way to do this???
I've made a few rules to organize my incoming messages on Mail and they all work fine. They move e-mails to mailboxes according to whoever sent them. But, when I make new rules now, they just don't work at all.
Rules in Mac Mail are working terribly randomly - create a rule to color messages from domain = x, didn't work; then tried a rule to color messages to = one of my 3 email addresses ... that worked on about 80% of the messages to that email address (***? no discernable pattern!) after exiting and re-launching mail ... Finally realizing this thing just doesn't work I deleted all the rules ... several exits/re-launches I now still have about 80% of my messages to one email address I use colored, with no discernable pattern. There are no rules now.
Using OS X 10.7.4 on a 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Mac Book Pro w/ 4 GB Ram, Mail 5.2. Have 3 email addresses, 1 Mobileme using IMAP and 2 Gmail addresses using IMAP.
Info: MacBook Pro (15-inch Late 2008), Mac OS X (10.7.4)
How can I get rules to work in Mac Mail? I have tried every criteria possible to move the incoming messages of certain senders from my inbox to Junk mail or trash. I apply the rule, & it does nothing. I highlight the email itself in the inbox column, right-click and select "apply rule" and absolutely nothing happens. It moves nothing, anywhere.
I have successfully set up quite a few rules in Mail 5.2 to filter my messages, but I can't get them work on outgoing (sent) mail.I tried to set up a rule to send any outgoing message with a certain recipient in the "To" field to a specific mailbox (ie Trash), but the messages just sit in the Sent box.
All of a sudden, mail.app no longer applies the Junk mail rules. Although the messages are identified as junk, they are no longer moved to the Junk folder on my iMAP server.
I'm running Leopard 10.5.2 My settings are in the attached screenshot.
I'm trying to sent up an automatic response email in mail rules, the problem is when I filter the email I want to respond to, I don't get the option to send a response to the "Reply-To" field, I can only reply to the "From" field which is no good to me. The mails I receive are booking inquiries generated by an online form so the "From" field is always the same email address not the guest address which is in the "Reply-To" field.
I'm trying to organize my mail by sender (if anyone has better organizational ideas other than deleting mail, let me know).
Right now, I have rules so all new emails are directed towards various inboxes (family, friends, etc.). However, this means I need to go to a bunch of different folders to read my email.
Is there a way to set up a rule so that mail gets routed according to email address after being read? I just want to go to my primary inbox, read a message and have it routed accordingly. I feel like I might be missing something very basic here...
Any help would be appreciated. In case you can't tell, I'm new to the world of mac. Now that I don't spend all my time fighting with a pc, I actually have time to try and organize my life...
I've set up Rules and they work if I go to Messages/Apply Rules and click each of the rules. However, it does not apply the rules if I click All Rules at the head of that list. Someone advised me to check the boxes of each Rule under Tools/Rules so they would be applied when mail arrives, but that doesn't work. All of those boxes are checked and the rules are not applied when mail arrives.
1. Any idea how to make rules apply as mail arrives? 2. If that's not possible, do you know how to make "all rules" work so I don't have to highlight and click through each of the several rules?
