Odd Smart Mailbox Behavior

I receive a lot of mail with attachments so I created a Smart Mailbox with the following conditions -- ALL must be met:
1. Contains Attachments
2. Date Received is not in the last 2 weeks
My goal is to keep my mail intact for 2 weeks, and then delete the attachments so I can save disk space.
The Smart Mailbox works but not as I expected. I would assume that every day there would be at least one message that meets the conditions since I receive at least one attachment per day. What actually occurs is that the Smart Mailbox only shows mail every two weeks but some of the messages are older than two weeks -- as old as four weeks. The behavior seems odd to me.
Any suggestions?
Mac OS X (10.4.3)

If it's "not in the last 2 weeks" then it'll show messages older than the last 2 weeks. Do you want to show messages that are 2 weeks old? If yes, then change "not in the last 2 weeks" to "is exactly 2 weeks".

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Okay, I think I understand better now. So I just ran a test, by creating the following rule:
I specifically chose an address (obviously not the one shown) that I had a message from in my Inbox, and a word that was present in the subject line of several messages in my Inbox. When I ran this rule on my Inbox, it copied exactly the messages I would have expected into the test mailbox. Are you seeing different behavior with the same rule, or is your rule constructed differently?
If the difficulty is with running the rule, note that (as I said earlier) rules only run automatically on unread incoming messages. It won't run automatically on existing messages or on messages on an IMAP mail server that you have read on another device using (in which case they will have been marked as read). If you need to run this in such conditions, you'll have to either run the rule manually or run it via an AppleScript or something similar that is somehow (via something other than Mail) made to execute at certain times/intervals or under certain conditions.
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I want to create a smart mailbox that will copy and archive all messages to/from a particular recipient and e-mails to/from others about the subject of most of the conversation with that recipient. I want the archiving to happen as they arrive in my inboxes and not automatically remove them from the servers--some I still need on the servers to access from multiple locations/machines.
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Some searching here and googling suggests that the ANY command is problematic in this OS for a lot of people, but is there a known fix? Or a better way to create a 'smart' archive to do what I want?

Okay, I think I understand better now. So I just ran a test, by creating the following rule:
I specifically chose an address (obviously not the one shown) that I had a message from in my Inbox, and a word that was present in the subject line of several messages in my Inbox. When I ran this rule on my Inbox, it copied exactly the messages I would have expected into the test mailbox. Are you seeing different behavior with the same rule, or is your rule constructed differently?
If the difficulty is with running the rule, note that (as I said earlier) rules only run automatically on unread incoming messages. It won't run automatically on existing messages or on messages on an IMAP mail server that you have read on another device using (in which case they will have been marked as read). If you need to run this in such conditions, you'll have to either run the rule manually or run it via an AppleScript or something similar that is somehow (via something other than Mail) made to execute at certain times/intervals or under certain conditions.
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I have been running a fairly comprehensive set of smart mailboxes to organise mail since August 2002. Today I noticed all my smart mailboxes have disappeared.
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I keep regular back ups of the library/mail folder, but rather than start to fiddle and experiment with replacing files from my back ups, I'm assuming someone here can tell me exactly which files from the backed up library/mail folder I should move to my actual library/mail folder. I'm guessing it will be one or more of the files in the MailData folder.
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This what I have in my actual library/mail folder.
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The same thing just happened to my smart mailboxes. I noticed that you did not receive an answer....Did you find the file or another way to resolve this?

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How do I view them from both my .mac account and my G5 using the stamp mail icon. I can't figure out to sync them.
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When creating a mailbox with the Mail.app (not a Smart Mailbox) your location choices are "On My Mac" which is stored locally on the hard drive only and if your have a .Mac or IMAP type account, you can select the account from the pop-up window for the location to create a server stored mailbox.
Any server stored mailboxes created should be available under the .Mac account icon in the mailboxes drawer.
I'm also having difficulty syncing data. For example, if I delete
an email from my G5 and then go to .mac, it's not viewable but
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Not sure why you want or need to keep messages marked for deletion synchronized with the server but in order to do so, go to Mail > Preferences > Accounts and under the Mailbox Behaviors tab for the account preferences, select "Store deleted messages on the server" in addition to "Move deleted messages to the Trash mailbox".
The server stored Trash mailbox for the account will then be available under the .Mac account icon in the mailboxes drawer.
For example, if I delete an email from my G5 and then go to .mac,
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A .Mac type account is really an IMAP type account and behaves in the same way. Unless you select "Store deleted messages on the server" for the account preferences with the email client used, messages marked for deletion with the email client used (such as the Mail.app) will be stored locally on the hard drive and not on the server.
This behavior with an IMAP type account is the same regardless the email client used on any platform - Mac (OS X) or with a PC (Windows).

My smart mailboxes are not synchronising between my iMac and my Macbook air

Hi, I have an iMac running OS X 10.9.5 and a Macbook Air running OS X 10.9.5. I predominately use my iMac, but when I travel or out of the office I take my Macbook Air. I can see my smart mailboxes on both machines, but the content is missing on the majority of my smart mailboxes on my Macbook Air.
Oddly enough, I recently created a new smart mailbox (in the last three weeks) and the content of this mailbox is synchronised in both machines. I not sure how to fix this so as I have all smart folders synchronised on both machines.
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Dolores

Thanks, I knew that though and nothing was happening.
However, since I asked the question my documents have started to sync. No idea why, nothing has changed in my settings apart from a restart of all devices...but it's working so issue solved!
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as mentioned before, I'm migrating my email from Entourage to Mail and would like to "maintain" some search rules structure. Moving to Mail, I don't find a "parameter/feature" creating searching rules:
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Sounds like you know what you are doing, but just in case...
Smart Mailbox is a virtual view into your inbox and your archive mailbox. Your description of moved emails still showing up in your smart mailbox makes sense since it doesn't care what maiblox the emails are moved from. You can add additional rules to filter out inbox vs archive so you only see new messages from those contacts, but I'm guessing you probably already know this (but just checking in case this is easily solvable).
As for the behavior of select all move to archive forcing already archived emails to vanish you are correct that it sounds buggy.
If your email is Gmail they don't treat archives the same way most IMAP email servers work so you may need to investigate further.
If you can set up your smart mailbox to exclude already archived emails you can probably just avoid this issue all together.
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I have a Mailbox Behavior for Trash set to:
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POP accounts will only give you control to server settings at the inbox. If you never remove it from the server, it will download all messages when you log into your account from another computer. This could be a problem with thousands of messages left on a server.
For IMAP, your inbox will atuomatically sync to the IMAP inbox, so what you do in Mail or Webmail will reflect the change at the other.
For the other mailboxes, storing messages on the server in Mail settings basically syncs the IMAP and local mailboxes like the inbox does. So, if you trash a sent message in Mail, it will trash it at the IMAP site.
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You can make settings to archive messages automatically when deleted from the inbox or sent folder. I believe that is the default setting in GMail. That would be what you want to save all your mail. That would keep your inbox and sent mailboxes clean. Look at your IMAP site to see what settings you can make there.
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You can still set up a smart mailbox on your mac in mail to show the messages in the "all mail" mailbox that are greater than a year old. Only those would show up in that smart mailbox and you can just select all and delete without having to visually look at all the messages in the IMAP "all mail".

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Hi there,
I am interested in messages which are "To:" addresses which begins with "curtis".
This doesn't work: Any Recipient -> Begins with -> curtis
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Curtis

Hmmm. I just created a new smart mailbox, set the condition to any recipient begins with austin - as far as I can see it has found all the messages I would expect.
What aspect doesn't work for you?
AK

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I am never able to quit Mail now because this single "activity" keeps it from quitting. The thermobar just hangs there nearly half-way through.
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I would try rebuilding the whole Mail index. quit mail and delete the file homedirectory/library/mail/envelope index. start Mail and let it import. see how things are after that.

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AppleScript <--------- CLICKY CLICK
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