Mail app; auto-forwarding emails - What am I doing wrong?

[felixen]

Hey guys,

I receive some emails every single day that I need to auto-forward to another email address. I always work with the Mail app on Mac. They always come from the same email address and have the same text in the subject field.

To set it up, I opened the Mail app > Settings > Rules. In here I've tried a couple of different setups that I feel would all be logical, but I just cannot get it to auto-forward these emails.

In the attached screenshot you can see one of my setups. I've chosen my email account that originally receives the emails. Then I've chosen "From" who the recipient I wish to forward is, and I've chosen which "Subject" emails I want to forward.

I've also tried not mentioning my original account in the rules since I imagined it would then just apply to ALL of my email accounts, which would be fine. I've tried not having both the "From" and the "Subject" since just 1 of them should be sufficient (the values in each of these fields are ALWAYS the same).

I've also tried switching between the "Matches" and the "Contains" settings.

I can't see what I'm possibly doing wrong since the setup seems very straight-forward and logical, but clearly I'm doing something wrong. Any tips?

 

[BrianBaughn]

Can you set up the forwarding rule at your email provider's webmail access? It would seem to me that it would be preferable.

 

[felixen]

Can you set up the forwarding rule at your email provider's webmail access? It would seem to me that it would be preferable.

I was hoping to do that initially, but Bluehost is hosting my email and they only allow me to forward ALL emails coming into my address to another address. And I'll need to be selective and only forward emails coming from a certain recipient.

 

[BrianBaughn]

I don't see anything wrong with the rule but I can't tell if anything you've entered into the fields is in error.

Keep in mind that the rules are applied to new messages coming in. I believe that reading a message on another device will prevent the forwarding from occurring in Mail based on my own testing. That's another reason Mail-based automatic rules aren't reliable. Additionally, there's no record of what emails actually get forwarded...at least in my case...unless I add an action to the rule to flag the email or copy the email to a particular folder.

If you forward all your mail at Bluehost to another email address does that impede the normal use of your mail? I ask because you could have all your mail forwarded to a free account at a more configurable host so that you could set up the forwarding at that host. You wouldn't need to sync to that account...just use it for rules like the one you're trying to set up.

 

[felixen]

The info in the fields is correct. And I also do not open these emails on any of my devices, so it's not because the message has already been opened.

But yes, good point, I guess I could forward all of the emails through Bluehost to a Gmail account, and then on Gmail set up a forwarding rule for the specific emails I need to forward.

Just weird that this rule in the Mail app doesn't work - I really can't see what I could be doing wrong.

 

[Significant1]

Does filter processing not allow you to forward?
https://my.bluehost.com/hosting/help/569

 

[felixen]

Does filter processing not allow you to forward?
https://my.bluehost.com/hosting/help/569

Lol you're right. Gotta love the Bluehost support rep that said it couldn't be done. Thanks! I've just set up the rule, so now to wait for the next email to come in and see if it works.


PS. Regarding the MacOS Mail app, as suggested above I added a rule to color the emails in question. The emails now get colored, but they still aren't forwarded. So I can say now for sure that the rule is set up properly to recognize the correct emails, but it fails when having to forward them.

 

[vjl323]

PS. Regarding the MacOS Mail app, as suggested above I added a rule to color the emails in question. The emails now get colored, but they still aren't forwarded. So I can say now for sure that the rule is set up properly to recognize the correct emails, but it fails when having to forward them.

I'm having the same thing happen to me - the rule is being triggered, as the background color changes when applying the rule to the mailbox, but the forwarding never happens, and a redirect brings back an iCloud bounce due to an issue with DMARC records [and i'd rather forward than redirect anyway]. Using 10.13; upgrading to 10.14 not possible.

 

[felixen]

I'm having the same thing happen to me - the rule is being triggered, as the background color changes when applying the rule to the mailbox, but the forwarding never happens, and a redirect brings back an iCloud bounce due to an issue with DMARC records [and i'd rather forward than redirect anyway]. Using 10.13; upgrading to 10.14 not possible.

Bummer. I'm still having the issue, too. And it still annoys me I can't solve it