Smart folders or rules in Mobile Me

Is there anyway to get rules to filter my incoming mail before it is pushed to my iPhone? Or, Alternatively can smart mailboxes be synchronised with Mobile Me accounts?

Hi bluecool,
You wrote: "Are Smart boxes more powerful than rules like this?"
They are not the same function, at all. With a Smart Mailbox, the messages do not move, at all, but are merely listed in the Smart Mailbox. They stay in the original mailbox. Smart Mailboxes are often temporary, and used to provide an overlay for a certain purpose.
Rules are normally used to transfer messages to other mailboxes that you create for archival purposes. Although Tiger's Mail has now provided a command to copy, rather than move messages, by far the most common action is to move, so as to limit growth in the size of the Inbox.
Thus, as an example, you might have Rules to move messages into several mailboxes, say by client, but have Smart Mailboxes for projects or products common to several clients, or new for a particular client. The message content stays in the client specific mailbox, but the Smart Mailbox provides another way to review for certain activity.
Does this help?
Ernie

Similar Messages

Smart folders versus Rules

What is the difference between Preferences > Rules and a Smart Mailbox?
Will they both work on incoming mail and mail in my Inboxes?
Will they work on folder in On My Mac?
If I Edit a Smart Mailbox does the mail that originally fit that description go back to wherever (say the Inbox) that it came from originally?
Thanks for any expertise, tricks or treats with these?
Thanks.

I was wondering if there was a way to gather all mail (all Inboxes and all On My Mac) - say from someone or with some name in a title - and then put it into a folder on On My Mac.
Not automatically, no; at least no way I know of. Again, that could perhaps be done with an AppleScript or Automator action. Mail Act-On might also be of interest.
The other aspect of the question should probably be done in a Filter to then catch all /new/ incoming Mail and send it to a folder. On this one, can I ask you if this Filter Folder can be in an Inbox or if it can be in On My Mac?
A Rule can redirect incoming mail to any mailbox you wish, whether it's on a server (as with IMAP or Exchange accounts) or a local mailbox.
Can I also ask you if there are any guidelines or tricks on choosing keywords, using quotes, or specifications for the Filter Search criteria? I /think/ that for my google Filter - that it started picking up any email that had any kind of google in the /full/ header of the email instead of just the title of who it came from if that makes sense
Try selecting "From" rather than "any recipient".
Regards.
Regards.

I lost the capability of using Outlook 2011 Smart Folders after my Mountain Lion 10.8.2 install

After my OS 10.8.2 upgrade from Lion 10.7.5, I noticed an immediate problem with Outlook 2011 attached to our Exchange Server. 1) I rebuild My Identity two times using the Microsoft Database Utility Program, 2) I re-Indexed my whole Hard Drive Volume using Spotlight's Privacy Feature (actually inputing the volume in the Privacy screen, then immediately removing it to start the indexing which took 24 hrs.), and 3) I removed and added back the Outlook .plist files located in both Preference Folders (Home-User) and System.
All email Smart Searches stop at the date 10/5/12 the day I finished my Mountain Lion Install. I cannot add Outlook Smart Folders as well. Is there a Mountain Lion/Outlook .plist file that was stepped on or should I export my Identity file and create a New Identity and re-import my information. It seems that that has been tried on the Microsoft Mac discussion boards and it has been ineffective at solving the functionality of Outlook 2011 after a Mountain Lion Install.
Interestingly, I have an an older mid 2009 iMac, a late 2009 Mac Mini and a mid 2010 MBP iCore7 home computers running Outlook after a Mountain Lion Install and the program works great!!! However, I only have Mail coming into the InBox on the Exchange Server and do not download any mail to the Computer Inboxes. I download emails from the Exchange Server to the Computer (Late 2009 Mac Mini) office and the Rules to move mail to "on my computer folders" work nicely. The Smart Folders in which I want to filter and view 0 Day or 1 Day old (Yesterday) emails does not function and seem to stop functioning the day I installed OS 10.8.2.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks! ~DDAM

After my OS 10.8.2 upgrade from Lion 10.7.5, I noticed an immediate problem with Outlook 2011 attached to our Exchange Server. 1) I rebuild My Identity two times using the Microsoft Database Utility Program, 2) I re-Indexed my whole Hard Drive Volume using Spotlight's Privacy Feature (actually inputing the volume in the Privacy screen, then immediately removing it to start the indexing which took 24 hrs.), and 3) I removed and added back the Outlook .plist files located in both Preference Folders (Home-User) and System.
All email Smart Searches stop at the date 10/5/12 the day I finished my Mountain Lion Install. I cannot add Outlook Smart Folders as well. Is there a Mountain Lion/Outlook .plist file that was stepped on or should I export my Identity file and create a New Identity and re-import my information. It seems that that has been tried on the Microsoft Mac discussion boards and it has been ineffective at solving the functionality of Outlook 2011 after a Mountain Lion Install.
Interestingly, I have an an older mid 2009 iMac, a late 2009 Mac Mini and a mid 2010 MBP iCore7 home computers running Outlook after a Mountain Lion Install and the program works great!!! However, I only have Mail coming into the InBox on the Exchange Server and do not download any mail to the Computer Inboxes. I download emails from the Exchange Server to the Computer (Late 2009 Mac Mini) office and the Rules to move mail to "on my computer folders" work nicely. The Smart Folders in which I want to filter and view 0 Day or 1 Day old (Yesterday) emails does not function and seem to stop functioning the day I installed OS 10.8.2.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks! ~DDAM

Duplicate smart folders and syncing

I have 5 Macs. They are all set to sync using dot mac.
I hadn't used 2 of them lately, the others were being synced.
I noticed that mail had 2 of the exact smart folders (with several folders within them). And all of the criteria disappeared from the smart folders.
I wanted to get the smart mailbox criteria from the computers I had not synced lately as that was still ok.
So I thought I could turn off the syncing for mail rules, signatures and smart mailboxes by removing the check mark from that option. But immediately upon syncing, my smart mail box was replaced with 2 duplicates with no criteria available. So it seems that ignored the fact that the option was not checked when I synced.
Now I have 1 mac left. On that Mac I would like to sync bookmarks, calendars, contacts, keychains. But I would like to keep the smart mailboxes the way they are and send them to the other macs.
The problem is that my MacBook Pro is set for automatic syncing. And when I turn it on, it will connect wirelessly and automatically sync.
How do I get to it quick enough so the sync will not happen and I can put it in manual mode?
Then how do I sync just what I want to sync? And how do I then sync the smart mailboxes back to the other macs?
I don't want to turn on the MBP until I know exactly what to do.

The first thing you should do is to make a backup of any data you don’t want to be overwritten as a result of synchronizing with the server, and you can avoid that to happen until you’re done by just turning off the Internet connection or disconnecting the computer from the network.
In particular, you should make a backup of ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist and any *.plist files within ~/Library/Mail/, such as SmartMailboxes.plist. As long as you keep a backup of those files, you don’t have to care about being fast enough.
After making sure at least one of your Macs has all the settings as desired (quit Mail and manually replace any *.plist files if necessary), go to System Preferences > .Mac > Advanced, click Reset Sync Data, and choose the appropriate options to reset the Mail data stored on the .Mac server with the data locally stored on the computer, i.e. sync data must flow from the computer to the .Mac server.
There may be other (better) ways to do it that I haven’t considered -- I don’t have a .Mac account myself.

Smart Folders, Spotlight comments and Apple mail messages

Hi,
I have a simple question, but couldn't figure it out yet:
I have a workflow that tags specific mail messages according to the specific mail inbox folders I assign them to (be it via incoming rules, or Act-On rules) by automatically adding specific Spotlight comments.
My mail messages, therefore, have text in their comment boxes (if you check via GetInfo).
When I use Spotlight, I can find mail messages by searching for the comments - this is exactly as expected.
I however also have smart folders (searching for a specific Spotlight comment) that list other files that I tag with the same Spotlight comments - but my Smart Folders never find the mail messages with the requested tags (at most they find the folder that contains the messages if this folder is tagged - which it is generally not).
Question: how can I make sure that the Smart Folder does indeed identify and list the mail messages that I have tagged via Spotlight comment ?
Thanks a lot !
D.V.
iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Howdy,
I cannot reproduce this problem myself...I see the same results in both the Mail spotlight and the spotlight menu bar item. I'm not sure if after installing 10.5 a new spotlight index is created, but it might be worth a shot to create a fresh index and see if that helps.
I haven't tried this, but it was the easy way I could find to reindex.
Open Spotlight Preferences
In the privacy tab, add the volume you want to reindex
After a few moments, remove that volume from the privacy list
Allow Spotlight to reindex the volume
Please let me know if that works for reindexing.
+R

Can smart folders see color of emails?

I have yet to upgrade to Leopard, and I have a specific question about Mail. In Tiger, I can assign a color to an email message, and I use this as a way to set categories for emails. However, smart mailboxes in Tiger cannot sort emails by their color. Do smart mailboxes in mail have this ability?
Thanks,
Jack

No, Leopard hasn't added that feature. Best you can do is create a rule that adds a color to specific emails based on your criteria, then have it move that email to another folder. But this won't be a Smart folder but an actual one that the email moves to and out of your inbox. And if you are adding the colors manually then you can't even do that unless there is a specific criteria that all red emails have that you can make a rule from.
There is a third party app called MailTags:
http://www.indev.ca/MailTags.html
That allows for all kinds of tagging and will then sort those tags into Smart folders. I haven't used it but I've had my eye on it. Just can't live with the $30 price tag. If it was $15 I'd have snapped it up.

Smart folders keep resetting

Hi everybody
I have made a number of smart folders but they keep resetting the rules that I have made for the folders.
I have a suspicion that it happens every time I sync. with my .mac account. But I am not sure.
Doe’s anyone have a good suggestion that can solve my problem.
Best
Lars Kudsk

Hi Kudsk .
Yes, this looks like a .Mac syncing issue.
First of all, in Address Book do File > Back up Address Book, just in case something goes wrong while trying to solve the problem. It wouldn’t be the first time someone loses his/her entire Address Book because of syncing issues.
Now, set up things the way you want, then go to System Preferences > .Mac > Advanced, click Reset Sync Data, and choose the appropriate options to reset the data stored on the .Mac server with the data locally stored on the computer, i.e. sync data must flow from the computer to the .Mac server.

Column view in Smart Folders

This is just a comment but does anyone agree that Smart folders would really benefit from a column view. I realise that it probably breaks some basic user interface rules (though what's the difference between using search results & an alias as a starting point? neither of them indicate the 'real' file structure) but I think that it would be really useful to be able to browse directly from this view in the finder (like you can in the save dialogue).
Also, when dragging files around in the finder in column view, it would be nice if, when moving into an alias the finder didn't jump around to show the alias's original folder-its very disorientating, and it doesn't behave in this way when you're moving through the filing system normally...
Sorry, just some bugbears..
Chris
iBook G3, 600MHZ, Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Hi
I see what you mean, and it's a nice idea, (I use column wiew for everything, so I'm all for it) but it would mean basically reprogramming most of the Smart Folder code.
Smart Folders aren't really folders. They are just dynamically self-updating saved spotlight searches that Finder can interact with. In short, they are just special files, not folders. To make them into folders Apple would have to make some ridiculously complicated code to make a normal folder integrate with Spotlight, so it might be a while before this gets high on their priority list.
Hope I explained something!

Smart Folders are screwed for a start!

So, I had leopard beta (bag of nails) and Mail packed in.. So when Leopard went RC I bought it and upgraded, everything is sweet, mail came back to life and decided its indexes were a mess and sorted them.
I have 2 mailboxes:-
1 Exchange
1 Mac.com mail
2 things are happening, when I click on INBOX, I have always been able to see mail aggregated from both mailboxes, but I see nothing now.. (it is fine if I click on the individual mailboxes)
The second thing, Smart folders don't work, they display nothing... sometimes when I close mail and open it again, I can see the filtered mail for a split second before its gone!
Any Ideas?

McRoger wrote:
I guess it is a bug in Mail.app in Leopard and the two conditions have been inverted.
Are you sure?
I never used a Leopard Beta, just "Archive & Install" to upgrade from 10.4.10, and i cleaned out email so i'm using an entirely new setup.
When i create a smart mailbox with several rules, of which ANY should match, i get zero content. I also get zero content with it set to match ALL, which is likely correct.
If i give the smart mailbox only a single rule to match, presto, i get 100+ results! I did some further tests and for me ALL works correctly, but ANY is buggered!
!http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/8663/vptx1xp7.png!

Smart Folders Problem

Ok, heres my set-up
I have three smart folders set up that work fine
2 have rather unimportant E-Mails
the other one has important info
I want to set up a smart folder that displays all e-mails that ARE NOT in the 2 unimportant mailboxes
I tried theses conditions
" Contains messages that match all of the following conditions:
Message is not in mailbox-"unimportant mailbox 1"
Message is not in mailbox-"unimportant mailbox 2" "
THE PROBLEM IS
it lets messages from "unimportant mailbox 2" into that smart mailbox
can anyone show me some way of doing this?

Same problem with my setup (the which looks quite like you).
My rule is : 'Show every Note that doesn't contain "myText" '
The result : the smart folder contains the messages that do contain "myText"
I also tried the reverse (meaning : 'Show every Note that contains "myText" '), and both smart folders contain the EXACT same data.

Smart Folders & Unplayed Podcasts

Hello-
How do I configure the Smart Folders in iTunes to display or show the blue dots next to an unplayed podcast?
I’ve tried selecting different options under the View pull-down menu, but nothing seems to work. Thanks.

If you're looking for the blue dots on a Smart Playlist, they don't show there. The only place I've ever seen them is in the actual Podcast library.
If you want your smart list to contain podcasts you have not listened to, you could add a rule to your Smart list that states Play Count is o.
Diane Wordsmith

Super-slow smart folders?

I'm currently using Mail as my default RSS reader. I have a number of Smart Folders set up to organize the feeds into categories (each based on a list of "From" rules). These smart folders, however, are SLOW. They'll update the unread counts and then when I click on them it will take anywhere from 10 seconds to a couple of minutes for the new messages to actually display.
This problem seems to only be related to smart folders that contain RSS feeds - my smart folders that hold mail messages are appropriately zippy, and selecting the RSS feeds themselves rather than the smart folders is perfectly fine.
Ideas? What might be slowing down the smart folders just for RSS feeds?

Try to start *Windows* in safe mode with networking enabled.
- Win8 http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/windows-startup-settings-including-safe-mode
- Win7 http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Start-your-computer-in-safe-mode
- XP http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/boot_failsafe.mspx
Still in Windows safe mode, start Thunderbird in safe mode.
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/safe-mode
Does the problem go away?

Disappearing Smart Folders in Mail

When I close Mail and then reopen later, I find that all my Smart Folders disappear including the Smart Mailboxes I have placed inside them. Is there someplace I can find them? Or is there a setting I need to make to prevent them from disappearing?

Found the solution on this thread

I have just recently bought a MacBook Air. I am looking for an email which I put into a folder on my Mac Pro. The smart folders have come across to the Air, but not the 'On my Mac' folders. Are they lost?

I have just recently bought a MacBook Air. I am looking for an email which I put into a folder on my Mac Pro. The smart folders have come across to the Air, but not the 'On my Mac' folders. Are they lost?

Are you sure that the "On My Mac" folders weren't empty? If all your mail accounts are IMAP, they may have been.

How to auto-restore Smart Folders on the dock after reboot?

So I've created a smart folder that basically gathers all the applications that I use with the Adobe Creative Suite (i.e. Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, etc.). For quick access, I drag the smart folder to the dock and I change the sort method to NAME and the view to LIST. And here's what I get as a result, which works very nicely:
http://imgur.com/EWUgm6w
The problem is, after I restrat my Mac, that smart folder on the dock gets completely messed up (the folder icon is changed and nothing pops up when I click on the icon) so I have to then delete the one that's on the dock, drag a new copy out and then change the sort and view methods to my preferences all over again. I was a bit surprised the first time I noticed this but after seeing the smart folder get messed after multiple restarts, I realized that there's something wrong.
My assumption is that the smart folder gets reprocessed on a reboot and though the original location where the smart folder is stored is fine when I go look at it, the shortcut that I place on the dock loses its functionality altogether.
I'm wondering if anyone has run into this on their end and found a good solution? If there was a script I could run when the computer started to automate the tasks that I have to do (remove old folder from dock, copy new one, change sort & view methods), that would be great -- but I don't know how to do this! Alternatively, if there's another way to achieve this pop up list without creating a folder manually and dragging 10 shortcuts into the folder, that would be great. I like the idea of keeping the list dynamic (hence the smart folders method) so that if anything changes, the updates would be reflected autmatically in the folder.

I have the same issue. Upon restarting, my two smart folders get a drawer-looking icon and don't function. I am able to right click to change settings, but nothing seems to get them to actually work.

Smart folders or rules in Mobile Me

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