How to update Mail Rules in one go?

[steffi]

It seems iCloud always make this unnecessarily complicated.

But if I have say 50 rules that all reference 2018 how do I point them to newly created folders for 2019 by editing
the .plist file etc.

This has always been difficult and never seems to get any easier. But manually pointing each rule at the new folder is unnecessarily tedious when all I want to do is replace every reference of 2018 to 2019.

 

[fisherking]

can't you make one rule with 50 parameters, then just change the selection with the year? just a thought...

 

[steffi]

can't you make one rule with 50 parameters, then just change the selection with the year? just a thought...

I'm not sure I understand. Each rule is bound to a folder. Think of mailing lists and their folders.
[doublepost=1547396247][/doublepost]Between SyncRules.plist and SyncedFilesInfo.plist and logging in and out of iCloud there seems to be no why to get it to trust the computer before resyncing with the cloud whenever it's reactivated.

All somebody needs to fix this is a way to completely invalidate the Rules as seen by the cloud.

 

[BrianBaughn]

Change the rules to put the mail in folders named "This Year - Accounts Payable" (or whatever you're doing) and so on. The rest you can figure out.

 

[steffi]

Change the rules to put the mail in folders named "This Year - Accounts Payable" (or whatever you're doing) and so on. The rest you can figure out.

Let's say I'm subscribed to 50 mailing lists and each of them routes the mail to a specific folder for the current year.

So there's 50 rules all pointing at a separate 1:1 mailbox that ends with 2018 for last year.

I want to update all of those rules to 2019 without needing to do so manually in Mail.app.

 

[kryten2]

Try this and post back the results before and after you change the rule. Open Script Editor and paste :

tell application "Mail"
-- replace "your_rule_name" with valid rule name
move message of rule "your_rule_name"
end tell

 

[steffi]

Try this and post back the results before and after you change the rule. Open Script Editor and paste :

tell application "Mail"
-- replace "your_rule_name" with valid rule name
move message of rule "your_rule_name"
end tell

So this is destructive so what does it do before I tried to run it?

What affect does move message of rule have?

move message (mailbox) : If rule matches, move to this mailbox

Again to explain what I'm doing is trying to ensure the rules are updated from referencing a folder 2018 with 2019 instead.

so when you had a rule like this in SyncedRules.plist

<string>local:///Archive/lists/java/stripes-users/2018</string>

I replace that with

<string>local:///Archive/lists/java/stripes-users/2019</string>

but because the SyncedRules.plist gets replaced with the one known to iCloud my edit is short lived.

 

[kryten2]

So this is destructive so what does it do before I tried to run it?

It will get a property value and nothing more. What makes you think this is destructive? I frequent macrumors to help people, you can check my other posts.

What affect does move message of rule have?

None for now, it's a property of the rule class.

move message (mailbox) : If rule matches, move to this mailbox

I see you looked at Mail's dictionary, that's a good sign.

Again to explain what I'm doing is trying to ensure the rules are updated from referencing a folder 2018 with 2019 instead.

so when you had a rule like this in SyncedRules.plist

<string>local:///Archive/lists/java/stripes-users/2018</string>

I replace that with

<string>local:///Archive/lists/java/stripes-users/2019</string>

Editing those files is a dead end as iCloud keeps messing up. I don't use iCloud so I can't check those plist files.

I'm interested in your problem because the Mail application is scriptable so perhaps the solution is just a few lines of code. I'm also assuming that each of your 50 rules has some kind of move/copy mail action, right?