Rules don't work very well in mail - am I missing something

[macgrl]

Hi there, I have rules set up in mail to divert incoming mail into folders.

One specific folder I have specific rules for so that mail with a specific subject or containing certain words are sent to it.

However this seems to only work about 50% of the time. Sometimes mail remains in my inbox that should have been sent to this folder. If I look at the messages that do and don't get redirected there is no real difference between them, they both contain the same key words or subject. If I highlight those messages in the inbox that should have been directed and click apply rules they are then sent to the folder so the rules should work in the first place?

Is there anything that I am missing here?

Should I set up more rules?

[whooleytoo]

I've seen the same behaviour, but don't know why either.

Do you have more than one Mac/PC checking that email account? Or perhaps an iPhone or other smartphone? I just wonder that perhaps if you only have the rules set up on (say) your Mac, but your iPhone fetches the email first, the rule isn't applied.

[macgrl]

Yes, i do have it on my iphone, that is the best explanation that I have heard yet. that the iphone picks it up before the mac.

[skybolt]

If you look at your mail from any place other than Mail on your mac (webmail, iPhone, iPod, Blackberry), the mail rules will not apply. I guess because Mail sees it as a "read" message and only applies rules to "unread" messages.

[macgrl]

Thank you so much for clearing that up, it was driving me nuts lol

[whooleytoo]

Originally Posted by macgrl

Yes, i do have it on my iphone, that is the best explanation that I have heard yet. that the iphone picks it up before the mac.

Excellent, hope that's it. I also was having the problem with receiving a lot of spam on my iPhone (where it's more tedious to deal with), and so thought about a solution:

Set up a second (private) email account. On your normal email account, set up rules to filter out any junk mail (or any mail you don't want/need to read on the phone), and forward the 'good' mail to the private email account. Your iPhone only then fetches email from this private email account.

That way, you should have a lot less junk to deal with on the iPhone, plus your mail rules on the Mac are always applied.

[sigbiz]

This message may find you several years too late - but in case anyone else has the same problem. You can use smart mailboxes to do this job.


It is not ideal in respect that the emails still have to reside in a folder somewhere so it means either keeping all sent mail or from time to time copying all emails in the smartfolder to another folder before deleting the other sent mail.