Using "Rules" causes mail to be "read"

When I set up rules to move incoming email to a special folder, I noticed that these emails do not show up as unread, even though I have not read them. Apparently the process of using a "rule" to sort them causes them to be marked as "read" and therefore missed unless specially looked for.
Is there anyway to turn off this automatic "read" that "rules" performs so that unread email show up in the "Mail" box as unread, without having to look for them one by one?
I have them moved to a local folder - that seems to be part of the problem. Unread files in local folders are not tagged in the main mail icon.

If you observe the Mail icon on the bottom of the screen, it has a red number indicating the number of unread messages.
Apparently, this only signifies the number of unread messages in the "online" inbox. Those that are moved to a local inbox on the computer do not register.
In other words, the Mail icon indicates unread messages stored on the Mac server. Once a message is moved to a local mailbox via the rules, it does not show up as an unread message on the deskcop icon.
Annoying, but not a real problem. I have to actually open the mail program and look inside to see if I have any unread messages.
I would suggest to Mac to use Red for unread messages in the online mailbox and Green for all other unread messages which are stored locally. It would be a nice update.
Dual G5 and MacBookPro Mac OS X (10.4.8)

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Rules cause Mail to crash?

This problem actually started some time ago, on a different Mac. I had a 17" G4 Powerbook. It was running 10.4.2 when the problem first appeared, and was eventually upgraded to 10.4.9. The problem is that when I turn on even a single Rule in Mail, Mail crashes on launch. The rule I tested this with is simple: If I receive mail from <domain>.com (where <domain> is a standard domain name) move the mail to a designated folder. The solution to the problem was simple: I turned rules off.
After a couple of years without rules, recently, I upgraded to a MacBook Pro. I transferred all my files over, of course. I thought, "Hmm, I sure miss using rules to sort my mail. Maybe that pesky problem has gone away." I turned on a single rule.
It worked! I was very pleased. At some point, though, I quit Mail. When I relaunched it - BAM! - Mail quit. I went through the Reopen/Relaunch loop, and was able to get Mail to open eventually. It seemed it downloaded a few additional emails each time. (I get a lot of mail.) Once I was able to get it to launch without crashing, I turned the Rule off, and Mail works again.
I tried a test: I turned Rules back on, checked for new messages, quit, then relaunched Mail. Mail doesn't quit if there are no incoming messages when I open it. I have a feeling it only crashes if there is a piece of mail that conforms to the rule, but perhaps not.
I've seen a few other posts in these forums going back to early 2006 on this topic, not one with a single reply.
I have a feeling there is a plist file I can delete to fix this problem... but which?
I've rebuilt my mailboxes and also deleted old pre-Tiger mbox files. I have mail folders as large as 2.49GB, but the mail is divided into subfolders within those, and no subfolder is larger than 1GB. I do not as a rule keep mail in the mailboxes themselves; it is all sorted into folders.
Should I go into the subfolders as well to delete the pre-Tiger mbox files? (I have not yet.) Also, the procedure for cleaning pre-Tiger mailboxes didn't mention the Incoming_Mail and IncomingTable_ofContents files, but I assume those should be deleted as well. (I've left them for now - they are small and I am scared.)
I know Mail was probably not intended for the volume of mail I end and receive, but I really don't want to switch to Entourage! I'm spoiled!
Thanks in advance for your help, and thanks to Ernie and David for the replies to other people's posts that got me this far.
Cheers,
David
MacBook Pro 15" Mac OS X (10.4.10) Mail 2.1.1
Powerbook G4 17 Mac OS X (10.4.2)

You can get rid of the file where rules are stored so that Mail creates it anew as follows:
1. If you have a .Mac account and .Mac synchronization of Mail data is enabled either in Mail > Preferences > General or in System Preferences > .Mac, disable it before proceeding.
2. Quit Mail if it’s running.
3. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Mail/.
4. Move any MessageRules.plist (Mail 2.x) and/or MessageSorting.plist (Mail 1.x) files to the Desktop. This is where Mail stores all the rules, including the rule that governs what the junk filter does.
5. Open Mail. As a result of having removed the rules files, the junk filter will be disabled now. You may want to either tell Mail to go offline immediately after opening it, or shut down the Internet connection before opening Mail, to prevent it from downloading anything until the junk mail filter has been enabled again.
6. Go to Preferences > Junk Mail and enable junk filtering.
7. Go online again if you went offline in step 5.
8. If the problem is fixed now and .Mac synchronization of Mail data was enabled at the beginning, enable it again, 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.
Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user’s home folder. That is, ~/Library is the Library folder within the user’s home folder, i.e. /Users/username/Library.
<hr>
> I do not as a rule keep mail in the mailboxes themselves;
it is all sorted into folders.
What do you mean? Messages can only be stored in mailboxes and nowhere else. Mailboxes may appear as generic folder icons in Mail, but they’re still mailboxes and you create them by means of Mailbox > New Mailbox...
> Should I go into the subfolders as well to delete the pre-Tiger mbox files?
You can certainly delete them if you want, but they have no bearing on this.
The only items within a mailbox (i.e. within an *.mbox or an *.imapmbox folder) used by Mail 2.x are Info.plist and the Messages folder. Any other files you may see there are almost certainly Mail 1.x files that Mail 2.x leaves there after the conversion. This is poorly explained in Mac OS X 10.4 Mail: Some mailbox files used by Mac OS X 10.3 are not deleted after importing. The article only talks about mailboxes in ~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/, but the same can also be said about mailboxes in “POP-”, “IMAP-”, or “Mac-” account folders.
As long as you keep a backup copy of the old files for a while (at least, until you’re sure everything was converted properly), they can safely be removed from the Mail folder. OnyX has a Cleaning > Misc > Temporary and obsolete items option for getting rid of all those files.
Note that if you see strangely-named Messages-T0x... folders, these aren’t old files from previous versions of Mail, but rather an indication that there is something amiss. More specifically, these are temporary folders created by Mail 2.x during an import or a reindexing process (e.g. rebuilding a mailbox) that Mail should have deleted when done.
<hr>
When an application crashes (i.e. quits unexpectedly), the system writes information about the state of the application at the moment of the crash to a log file. That information is called a crash report and makes troubleshooting easier. If Mail keeps crashing, proceed as follows to find and post the relevant part of the crash report here:
1. Open ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/Mail.crash.log. The whole crash log appears in a Console window (you can also open that file with any text editor). It may contain many crash reports. We only want the latest, which is located at the bottom of the file.
2. Look for a line that begins with “Date/Time:” as close to the bottom as possible, and another that says “Thread N Crashed:”, where N is a number. Select everything from the “Date/Time:” line down to (and including) the lines immediately following “Thread N Crashed:”. Copy that text and paste it in your post. Do not post the whole crash log, and do not include anything beyond the lines immediately following “Thread N Crashed:” either, just the relevant part.
Take a look at the following thread for examples of what a crash report looks like:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=466701

Using rules in mail

what i would like to do..
I would like to have all incoming mail to one of my e mail addresses, responded to automatically( auto response)
( i think somewhat like 'vacation responder' if that still exists.)
the response to all incoming mails which i would like to set up, is something like:
"this e mail address is no longer being used, please use instead this address: [email protected]"
can i do that?
how?
many thanks
neo

It could be that the file where rules are stored is corrupt. Try this:
1. Quit Mail.
2. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Mail/.
3. Locate MessageSorting.plist and move it to the Desktop. If there is a file called MessageSorting.plist.backup, move it to the Desktop too.
4. Open Mail. As a result of removing the rules file, the junk filter will be disabled now. You may want to either tell Mail to go offline immediately after opening it, or shut down the Internet connection before opening Mail, to prevent it from downloading anything until the junk mail filter has been enabled again.
5. Go to Mail > Preferences > Junk Mail, enable junk filtering, and configure it however you wish.
6. Go online again if you went offline in step 4.
Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user’s home folder, i.e. ~/Library is the Library folder within the user’s home folder.

Restoring Rules in Mail 6

I made a mistake (helped by nont weel described new functonality): Upgrading from lion to ML I accidentally activate the "document & data" sharing on icloud. This synced the rules of mail 6 of one of my user in icloud. Then in theother user I lost my hundred of rules built in years of work...
I my backup I found the "MessageRules.plist" file but the new mail uses three file to accomplish the job....
file://localhost/Users/macbook/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/RulesActiveState.plist
file://localhost/Users/macbook/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/UnsyncedRules.plist
file://localhost/Users/macbook/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/SyncedRules.plist
After a few try I realized that the file to modify is "UnsyncedRules.plist". I've been able to add a rule (ONLY ONE) from my backup files opening the UnsyncedRules.plist and the MessageRules.plist with XCode draggin it from the second to the first one...
That worked but only for one rule...
Adding other rules causes mail 6 not to recognize the file formatting and report an error or simply rewrite the file from scratch...
I've made a try also with text wrangler but with bad result....
How can i solve (without loosing the email downloaded in this 2 weeks)?
In order to not mistake anymore, where can I find an updated explanation of the meaning of "Document & Data" sharing in iCloud?
Thanks

I had to do the following to restore the signatures and mail rules:
1. Quit Apple Mail
2. Turn of these settings: System settings / iCloud:
    [ ] Mail
    [ ] Documents & Data
3. Copy the old Rules to the new location:
     cd /Users/phil/Library/Mail/V2/MailData
     cp "/Volumes/TimeMachine/Backups.backupdb/Computername/Latest/Macintosh HD/Users/phil/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/RulesActiveState.plist" .
     cp "/Volumes/TimeMachine/Backups.backupdb/Computername/Latest/Macintosh HD/Users/phil/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/SyncedRules.plist" .
     cp "/Volumes/TimeMachine/Backups.backupdb/Computername/Latest/Macintosh HD/Users/phil/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/SyncedRules.plist" UnsyncedRules.plist
     cp "/Volumes/TimeMachine/Backups.backupdb/Computername/Latest/Macintosh HD/Users/phil/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/MessageRules.plist" .
     rm -rf Signatures
     cp -r "/Volumes/TimeMachine/Backups.backupdb/Computername/Latest/Macintosh HD/Users/phil/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Signatures" .
4. Restart Apple Mail. The old rules and newly copied rules are both there. So I deleted the old rules.
5. System settings / iCloud:
    [ ] Mail
    [x] Documents & Data
6. As old rules moved mails to wrong mailboxes I had to identify these old wrong mailboxes and apply the restored rules to them.
If Apple Mail didn't find the old (wrong) mailboxes it created it new and placed the emails in there. So no emails were lost!
See also "iCloud problem with Mail.app": https://discussions.apple.com/message/20670006#20670006#20670006#20670006

Rules hang mail

Rules hang Mail.
I have a lot of rules and a several hundred mailboxes. When creating a new rule, Mail will intermittently hang when opening the preferences panes with rules, choosing the destination mailbox, or applying the new rule. I notice in the Activity Viewer has many many mailboxes that are briefly noted as "writing changes to disk". When creating a rule is successful, these flash up and quickly go away. When Mail hangs, the progress bars are various states of frozen stripes (like normal barbershop poles but stuck) or not displayed at all. I get the beachball and the Force Quit menu shows "(not responding)" . I've left it overnight, so this doesn't recover. After a reboot, I can make a few rules, but it will eventually hang. A reboot sometimes (but not always) allows a few more chances to make rules, but lately has been hanging as soon as I open the Prefs pane.
I've deleted many old rules and used Rebuild on almost all mailboxes (50 at a time not to hang Mail again), but no success. Why do rules cause Mail to hang?
Running up-to-date OS 10.6.7 and Mail 4.5 (1084).

Hi Stanley,
In the Mac Mail Menu Bar click Mail/Preferences. Make note of all your preferences under each tab.
Quit Mac Mail.
Go to ~/Library/Preferences and move this file com.apple.mail/plist to the Trash
Relaunch the Mail application.
Carolyn
Message was edited by: Carolyn Samit

Auto-reply using rules

Hi there!
I'm trying to find out how to send an auto-reply using Rules in Mail 3.6
Or, to be more precise, i'm trying to understand how to do it PROPERLY: in fact this morning my boss called me to say he got approx. 60 emails from me, replying even mails from 2009/2010... and it was EMBARRASING!!
Some questions:
- when a Rule is set to auto-reply, does my own reply appear in the 'Sent' mailbox afterwards? Not in my case. Is it normal? I cannot see my reply 'flying away' in the 'Mail Activity' window either...
- when i press the '<' button in front of the received mail, that usually opens the mail i've sent as reply, i got a error window "Error. Mail was unable to find your response to the message “xxxxx”. You may have deleted the message." even if the correct reply generated by Rules was actually sent. Again, any idea why this happens?
- when a Rule is created, does it apply to ANY message in the mailbox, including old ones, or only to new mails?
That's it for now...
Thanks for help,
J.

Ok, after some more trials i've got the answer for my 3rd question... I have to click "Don't Apply" to avoid the rule to be applied to old messages.
But let's agree that the whole window:
"Do you want to apply your rules to messages in selected mailboxes?
Applying rules to the selected mailboxes may change their contents. Active rules will always be applied to new messages."
is quite ambiguous.
I'm still wondering the reason for the behaviour described in my first two questions...
Thanks,
J.

How can I make a rule to mark all messages sent to Mail Trash as Read?

How can I make a rule to mark all messages sent to Mail Trash as Read?
When I look at some emails on my phone, I can see from the title that I don't need to read the email so I delete it without opening it. When I go to my Macbook Pro and open mail, the number of unread messages in my Trash shows next to the name. It drives me nuts. Can I just set a rule to mark all messages sent to trash as read? If that isn't possible, I'd take just making the number not show beside the Trash folder.

Just in the case that I actually do need to go back to them for some reason. I have some OCD tendencies which is also why the number beside the folder drives me nuts.

Can i use java mail APIs to read Unix mail

hi
can i use java mail APIs to read Unix mail?
Unix has "mail" command which can be used to access mails on the Unix system.
is it possible to execute mail & access unix mails remotely using POP/IMAP
thanks in advance

There are JavaMail providers that allow you to access the Unix mail spool files directly. Alternatively the standard JavaMail API can access a POP or IMAP server, if one is installed.

Flakey internet causes Mail to forget all cached mail

Whenever I'm on a slow/flakey link, Mail decides that all of my cached mail is invalid, and then wants to download it all (~10,000 emails) again. This is very annoying, since it does it at least once a week whenever I'm traveling.
It's driven my sister to abandon using Mail at all.
And, annoying, but wouldn't be a problem except that Mail keeps redownloading my emails, the "take all accounts offline" button is a toggle, so you can't just frob it and have Mail stop trying to talk to all of the servers.

I waited until Mail dropped my emails again, tried the suggestion.
Whacking com.apple.mail.plist did cause Mail to forget all of my accounts, but thankfully not my rules and signatures.
However, it didn't keep mail from dropping half my cached mail a week later.
Luckily my current link isn't quite as flakey as it could be, despite being in Iraq for the next several months.

Rule in Mail suddenly not working

Hi!
I have used Rules for a long time to help with email and identify senders and have had no problem. Today I wanted to edit a rule and when finished I first found that all my messages had a black background so my email looked like it had been redacted. After a frustrating hour or so I got the black removed but all my color coding for emails was gone - ie the rules aren't being applied. I have read through several of the discussions here and tried one suggestion of adding to a rule (hoping this would do it) and that didn't help. I have tried the 'apply rules' several times, shut down Mail and re-opened it and I still don't have the rules being applied. Any suggestions would be greatly appreicted as I really don't know what to do, or what I did to cause this. Hoping there is some technical genius out there who sprinkle magic dust and make it right. Thanks!

Have found a workaround - I use a rule to first copy the mail to a folder then redirect to the third party. This sends the attachment as well. I'm still not clear why forwarding no longer does this - or where the setting is in new mail to change this behaviour.
Steve

When using rogers.yahoo mail, I need to refresh my screen after every 2-3 actions.

While using Rogers.yahoo mail in FireFox, the screen freezes after every 2-3 actions (read email, delete email, respond to email, move email to folder etc.). I have to refresh the screen and then it goes along for another 2-3 actions and I have to refresh again. Very frustrating. I opened the same email account in Google Chrome and IE and it works fine there. This started happening yesterday.
In perhaps an unrelated thing, I get this error message every day, once, when I start up my PC for the past 2 months:
Microsoft.NET Framework
Unhanded exception has occurred in your application If you click Continue, the application will ignore this error and attempt to continue. If you click Quit, the application will close immediately. Unable to load DLL 'hppatusg01.dll': The specified module could not be found (Exception from HRESULT:0x8007007E)

No problem.
If the above does not fix the issue, '''try Firefox Safe Mode''' to see if the problem goes away. [[Troubleshoot Firefox issues using Safe Mode|Firefox Safe Mode]] is a troubleshooting mode that turns off some settings and disables most add-ons (extensions and themes).
''(If you're using an added theme, switch to the Default theme.)''
If Firefox is open, you can restart in Firefox Safe Mode from the Help menu by clicking on the '''Restart with Add-ons Disabled...''' menu item:<br>
[[Image:FirefoxSafeMode|width=520]]<br><br>
If Firefox is not running, you can start Firefox in Safe Mode as follows:
* On Windows: Hold the '''Shift''' key when you open the Firefox desktop or Start menu shortcut.
* On Mac: Hold the '''option''' key while starting Firefox.
* On Linux: Quit Firefox, go to your Terminal and run ''firefox -safe-mode'' <br>(you may need to specify the Firefox installation path e.g. /usr/lib/firefox)
''Once you get the pop-up, just select "'Start in Safe Mode"''
[[Image:Safe Mode Fx 15 - Win]]
'''''If the issue is not present in Firefox Safe Mode''''', your problem is probably caused by an extension, and you need to figure out which one. Please follow the [[Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems]] article to find the cause.
''To exit Firefox Safe Mode, just close Firefox and wait a few seconds before opening Firefox for normal use again.''
When you figure out what's causing your issues, please let us know. It might help others with the same problem.
Thank you.

Links to web page in any mail message will cause Mail app to hang, and won't open Safari.

Repeatable problem on iPhone or iPad.
Any link to a web page will cause Mail to lock up and become unresponsive, and won't open the web page in Safari.
The only way out of this is to back out to the home screen, double-click on the home button, then select the Mail app icon, holding it until I can "close" it. I can then relaunch Mail and look at any message I want just like normal. But if select any link, whether a text link or a picture in an email, the whole thing happens again.
Occurs on both my iPhone 5 and my iPad both running iOS 6.0.1.
Any suggestions that will allow me to go directly from a mail msg to a linked web page embedded within?

You ran a defective third-party "utility" that purports to "clean up" "junk" files. What it really does is to corrupt the operating system and many applications.
The first thing you need to do is remove that software according to the developer's instructions. Never install it, or anything like it, again. Then see below.
If you don't already have a current backup, back up all data, then reinstall the OS.* You don't need to erase the startup volume, and you won't need the backup unless something goes wrong. If the system was upgraded from an older version of OS X, you may need the Apple ID and password you used.
If you use FileVault 2, then before running the Installer you must launch Disk Utility and select the icon of the FileVault startup volume ("Macintosh HD," unless you gave it a different name.) It will be nested below another icon with the same name. Click the Unlock button in the toolbar and enter your login password when prompted. Then quit Disk Utility to be returned to the main screen.
There are ways to back up a computer that isn't fully functional. Ask if you need guidance.
If you installed the Java runtime distributed by Apple and still need it, you'll have to reinstall it. The same goes for Xcode.
*The linked support article refers to OS X 10.9 ("Mavericks"), but the procedure is the same for OS X 10.7 ("Lion") and later.

How do I create a rule in mail that only applies to flagged messages?

I would like to create a rule in mail that would delete messages of a certain age, but I need to keep some messages safe. I would like to be able to flag these or put them in a mailbox and have a rule making messages with those flags or mailboxes safe from being deleted. Is that something I can do? Thanks!

You can create a local mailbox and move the messages you want to keep there. I don't see any kind to rule you can make to move a flagged message, so you would probably have to do it manually, unless you can use other criteria to identify messages you wish to keep.
If you're using the server settings in mail to determine the age before deletion, the local mailboxes would be safe from that deletion. You can set to store messages on server for up to 30 days before deletion. This will work for IMAP accounts, but don't apply to the inbox. Just to the other main mailboxes such as Sent, Trash, etc.
If you create a rule to delete messages after a certain age (outside of what the servers would do automatically), I think it would only work on the inbox if at all, but not sure. If it were applied through all, it would delete them from the local folders also.
You can create a smart mailbox and input certain criteria such as flagged, age. You could exclude any mailbox that you don't want to include, such as local folders, by adding that to part of the criteria. You would have to delete the messages manually as they accumulate. This would be useful when you save a lot of mail, but say you only want to keep messages less than a year old. This would help you instantly see messages that meet your deletion criteria without having to manually check messages for age.

Using Yahoo Basic Mail w/FF, no drop down box of my e-mail contacts as I type an e-mail address - but it works in IE 8, plz fix ...

I use Yahoo Basic Mail. When composing an e-mail, Yahoo has an "e-mail address autocomplete" function. As I begin to type an e-mail address in the To CC, or BCC boxes - if there are addresses in my Yahoo Contact list with the same string of characters, a drop down box appears and I can click on the desired address and it populates the To, CC, or BCC box. This is an extremely convenient feature.
And, it works with IE 8. BUT, this feature DOES NOT work with FF 30.
Obviously, this is a problem with FF 30 - can you plz advise as how to correct the problem?
FYI: Java plug-in is always activated and JavaScript is default enabled in FF 30 on my PC.

Many site issues can be caused by corrupt cookies or cache. In order to try to fix these problems, the first step is to clear both cookies and the cache.
Note: ''This will temporarily log you out of all sites you're logged in to.''
To clear cache and cookies do the following:
#Click the menu button [[Image:New Fx Menu]] and click History button, and then Clear Recent History... .
#Under "Time range to clear", select "Everything".
#Now, click the arrow next to Details to toggle the Details list active.
#From the details list, check ''Cache'' and ''Cookies'' and uncheck everything else.
#Now click the ''Clear now'' button.
Further information can be found in the [[Clear your cache, history and other personal information in Firefox]] article.
Did this fix your problems? Please report back to us!

Rule in Mail of Mountain Lion

My wife and I each have a MacBook Pro (mid 2012) and are on th same LAN.
Whenever I create a "Rule" in my Mail 6.2 Account (in Preferences) it seems to be "added" to my wife's Mail Account also.
We do not use iCloud for Mail.
Any thoughts on how to make different "Rules" in each of our Mail Accounts ?

Rules are applied to emails according to the rules you specify. If you want them to apply to specific accounts, add a condition to the Rule.
Add a Rule such as if "To" contains (your wife's email address), then perform the other actions you specify.
Separate User accounts on your MacBook Pro would obviate this cumbersome requirement.

Using "Rules" causes mail to be "read"

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