Mail rules with a bit of complexity

[jasimon9]

My system administrator has convinced me to try OS X Mail rather than Outlook. I believe that Outlook, while having its warts as a mail client (due to its MS heritage), does have a great deal of power that is unappreciated by those who have not used it.

In any case, I am running into some of those limitations. The rules capability appears far more powerful in Outlook.

I need to implement the following rule:

From contains A or B or C
Subject contains D or E or F
Message contents contains G or H

Can this even be done? I am willing to have multiple rules to unwind the logic, but I am not convinced it will get the same result.

Any ideas?

 

[GGJstudios]

Am I missing something about your request? It seems so easy!

​

 

[belvdr]

From contains A or B or C
Subject contains D or E or F
Message contents contains G or H

Do you mean:

From contains A or B or C
AND
Subject contains D or E or F
AND
Message contents contains G or H

If so, then the above won't work and not sure how to do it.

 

[swiftaw]

Ok, I think I can do it.

Firstly, add addresses A,B, and C to address book, then create a Group in address book (lets say I call it Bob)

Now, we need to create 6 rules to do what you want.

Rule 1
If all of the following conditions are met:
Sender is a member of Group Bob
Subject Contains D
Message Content contains G

Rule 2
If all of the following conditions are met:
Sender is a member of Group Bob
Subject Contains E
Message Content contains G

Rule 3
If all of the following conditions are met:
Sender is a member of Group Bob
Subject Contains F
Message Content contains G

Rule 4
If all of the following conditions are met:
Sender is a member of Group Bob
Subject Contains D
Message Content contains H

Rule 5
If all of the following conditions are met:
Sender is a member of Group Bob
Subject Contains E
Message Content contains H

Rule 6
If all of the following conditions are met:
Sender is a member of Group Bob
Subject Contains F
Message Content contains H

All six rules would obviously perform the same action.

Am I missing something about your request? It seems so easy!

View attachment 163917​

That wouldn't do what he wants

 

[GGJstudios]

That wouldn't do what he wants

He didn't specify if the rules are inclusive or exclusive.

 

[swiftaw]

He didn't specify if the rules are inclusive or exclusive.

I presumed that they were separated by AND's else the solution is kind of trivial.

 

[belvdr]

He didn't specify if the rules are inclusive or exclusive.

I know, and that's why I asked to be clear.

 

[jasimon9]

Am I missing something about your request? It seems so easy!

View attachment 163917​

Yes, you are missing something. See response to belvdr.

 

[jasimon9]

Do you mean:

From contains A or B or C
AND
Subject contains D or E or F
AND
Message contents contains G or H

If so, then the above won't work and not sure how to do it.

Yes, you have it exactly. I should have explicitly included the ANDs.

 

[jasimon9]

Ok, I think I can do it.

Firstly, add addresses A,B, and C to address book, then create a Group in address book (lets say I call it Bob)

Now, we need to create 6 rules to do what you want.

Rule 1
If all of the following conditions are met:
Sender is a member of Group Bob
Subject Contains D
Message Content contains G

Rule 2
If all of the following conditions are met:
Sender is a member of Group Bob
Subject Contains E
Message Content contains G

Rule 3
If all of the following conditions are met:
Sender is a member of Group Bob
Subject Contains F
Message Content contains G

Rule 4
If all of the following conditions are met:
Sender is a member of Group Bob
Subject Contains D
Message Content contains H

Rule 5
If all of the following conditions are met:
Sender is a member of Group Bob
Subject Contains E
Message Content contains H

Rule 6
If all of the following conditions are met:
Sender is a member of Group Bob
Subject Contains F
Message Content contains H

All six rules would obviously perform the same action.



That wouldn't do what he wants

This is in fact what I have been doing -- taking a single rule and exploding it into many cases. It is a workaround that I am getting used to. On the other hand, the explosion of rules seems to be cumbersome, as I have a lot of rules, and many require this complexity.