Can mail.app rules be shared?

[dogbone]

I've had a look and can't see how to do it but it seems that it should be possible.

 

[Doctor Q]

Warning: Untested theory...

Suppose you have two users named Romeo and Juliet and want Juliet to use the rules already defined by Romeo.

It might be possible to do this by replacing file /Users/Juliet/Library/Mail/MessageRules.plist with a copy of file /Users/Romeo/Library/Mail/MessageRules.plist.

If that works, they would each be able to modify their own rules independently from that point on.

If, instead, you wanted them to always stay in sync, it might be possible to make file /Users/Juliet/Library/Mail/MessageRules.plist be an alias (as created in the Finder) of file /Users/Romeo/Library/Mail/MessageRules.plist.

And if that doesn't work, perhaps a Unix "soft link" (as created in Terminal) from file /Users/Juliet/Library/Mail/MessageRules.plist to file /Users/Romeo/Library/Mail/MessageRules.plist would work.

 

[MisterMe]

I've had a look and can't see how to do it but it seems that it should be possible.

If you want to share rules with your duplicate accounts on various computers, then you can easily do this via iDisk. If you want to share your rules with other users, that is a really bad idea.

 

[Doctor Q]

Stop the presses! I thought about this some more, and realized that ownership/permissions are going to get in the way. (Hey, weren't you and I just talking about ownership/permissions in another thread?)

So let me modify my untested ideas above:

1. To make a one-time copy of file MessageRules.plist, you have to make sure that file /Users/Juliet/Library/Mail/MessageRules.plist keeps its original ownership and permissions.

2. To permanantly share a single rules file, I'd guess you'd have to move the rules file to a public location and then use aliases or soft links that point to it from both users' libraries.

Example:

(a) Move file /Users/Romeo/Library/Mail/MessageRules.plist to folder /Users/Romeo/Public. Give it read/write privileges for everyone.

(b) Make file /Users/Romeo/Library/Mail/MessageRules.plist be an alias of file /Users/Romeo/Public/MessageRules.plist.

(c) Make file /Users/Juliet/Library/Mail/MessageRules.plist be an alias of file /Users/Romeo/Public/MessageRules.plist.​

Who knows... it might work!

 

[dogbone]

Great idea thanks.

The first idea worked. Easy to change permissions.

However it was a bit confusing because it kept not working even though I replaced the plist file. I checked the contents and it was right but it wouldn't work.

The problem was that there is a plist backup file! which kept overiding the new file. So that has to be replace too. Sweet.