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Excellent presentation. I notice you always configured these rules "On My Mac," rather than on the iCloud mail server. Is this because these rules only apply On My Mac, or because you didn't want to apply them to other devices you have such as an iPad or iPhone?

Good point. I never understood what "On My Mac" meant.

But Mail.app keeps putting wanted mail in the Junk mailbox and marking it Junk, even though I have not only added the sender to the Address Book, but also made a special rule that marks that sender as Not Junk. Still ignores both of those and marks it junk.

Oh, it even marks as Junk mail that I send to myself. Amazing.

johnnylundy, on 29 December 2011 - 02:03 PM, said:

Perhaps your Junk Mail filters in Mail>Preferences need to be reset or refined?

You can also create Smart Mailboxes if you just want to do the same as above without moving messages from any of your mail account inboxes. Same rules can be applied. Then you can select the smart mailbox to see all the filtered messages.

Something that many users do not understand is that by keeping mail in "inbox" and then later changing local ISP accounts, they can and will loose "inbox" mail that is from any ISP account that is deleted. This does not happen when incoming mail is moved to "on my Mac" mail boxes.

good info.
suppose i have a lot of messages, and a bunch of them get moved to various folders according to the rules i've set up. is there a way to get Mail to tell me which messages it's moved? or do i have to visit each folder to find the new additions?

leehljp, on 29 December 2011 - 06:28 PM, said:

True, but easy enough to move all those messages to the new email account or an archive before deleting the old one. Been there, done that.

Here's a tip. If you select the email that you want to create a rule for before creating the new rule, then choose From the emailer's address will be in the rule box.

Also, you can move the rules up and down, the one at the top gets applied first, then the rest in order.

dpearson, on 29 December 2011 - 08:25 PM, said:

Create a Smart mailbox which has only one criteria 'if mail is unread'. This smart mailbox will then display ALL of your unread email, no matter where it has been filed.

All very good information, until you start using iCloud. I have about 300 mailboxes and a corresponding number of rules. My system has worked flawlessly for years. The MacBook Pro has served as the 'Mother Ship' where ALL email gets sorted and stored. My old POP settings were to 'leave email on server for one week'. When I added an iPhone and then an iPad things continued to work perfectly. Because my rules on the MBP applied ONLY to email that it dealt with 'locally' the iOS devices were able to 'see' all the email that was sitting on the POP servers. PERFECT!
Now, along comes iCloud.... UGH!!!! Here are the two primary problem scenarios:

I leave home and leave the MBP running with Mail running.
Mail, of course, runs its rules on all incoming email.
The Inbox, being part of what is now by mandate of Apple a part of an IMAP account, is the same Inbox that my iOS devices access.
So, guess what happens on the iOS devices?
I get a 'banner alert' on the iPhone telling me that I've got email. By the time I swipe the phone, unlock it and go to Mail it is too late. The MBP has moved the message out of the Inbox and, as a result the email is no longer visible on the iPhone or iPad, or, for that matter, via iCloud through web browser.

Second scenario
I shut down the MBP before I leave home.
Now, yippee!! I can access MOST of my new email from the iOS devices (I say most because I still get some messages that for reasons unknown to me or Apple tech support at a high level alert me to their presence but then disappear to who knows where before I can see them )
This seems better, right up until I return home and start up the MBP...
Once Mail is running on the MBP I note that all that email I read on an iOS device has NOT been sorted by my rules. Ugh. So, I Select All mail in the Inbox and 'run rules'. NOTHING happens! For reasons unknown to me and the previously mentioned wiser folks my rules do NOTHING. I have found a wonderful workaround though... If I select each email in the Inbox, one at a time, then run rules on it, wait until it is finished 'processing' and then select the next email, the rules DO work. Very handy... I end up 'processing' a minimum of about 250 emails manually every day. Oh, and once they're processed and filed, that's right! They are no longer visible on the iOS devices!

To say I am unimpressed with iCloud and/or IMAP would be a gross understatement.

What I see happening is me having to rewrite/edit each and every one of my rules to reflect 'move a COPY of the email to mailbox blah blah'.... And then add another rule to the mix that says 'if email in Inbox is older than one week, delete'. I 'think' this should work and allow the iOS devices to access mail up to one week old, while having the MBP do all its sorting and filing as it has in the past. I do NOT look forward to having to do this however. Give me back POP access and I'll be VERY happy.

end of rant

IMAP isn't for everybody; in my experience it is more trouble than it is worth. If Apple is forcing users to use IMAP then it is time to switch to another e-mail provider, such as Runbox.

As far as Mail goes, it is a lightweight, buggy program that requires plugins to make it reasonably functional.

When I purchased a new MBP with Lion I was compelled to move from Eudora (used it for 15+ years and it still works fine with Snow Leopard) to another app. After testing several candidates I went with GyazMail. I don't have to wrestle with Mail's "Wizard" that insists that I set-up my Gmail accounts as IMAP when in fact I have GMail configured as POP3 accounts. Creating rules is similarly straight-forward. And at $18 for a license it is less expensive than Mail with the plugins needed to attain similar functionality.

Its great that mail has a "Bounce" feature for your junky mail. Wondered if there was a way to filter it into a folder, then automatically "bounce it back" in the background.

wallisp, on 03 January 2012 - 07:17 AM, said:

The bounce feature is useless and should be avoided. In nearly every case you're bouncing the message to a fake address or the address of an innocent person who had their address "stolen."