auto-filing of read mail in Apple Mail

Den 03/05/2008 kl. 11.47 skrev Mail Lists:

> I cannot believe there is not some way to *automatically* file read
> mail in Apple's Mail program

I do it the other way around. I have a lot of filing rules in Mail,
that file all my unread mail as soon as it reaches my inbox. The
appropriate mailboxes then show me how many I have in each.

In order to read my unread mail, I then have a smart mailbox with only
the unread mail.

In addition to that I have the following smart mailboxes: "read mail
from today" that contains all mail from today that I have read -
notice that the mail has already been filed in the appropriate folder
and is accessible in this box anyway. Then I have a "read mail from
this week" and a "read mail from this month". Finally I have a "sent
mail from today" that only contains the mails I have sent today and
one simply named "attachments".

This way I never even have to think about asking mail to do auto-
filing of my mail. (I do hand-file a lot of stuff, though, through the
contextual menu, that lets you either copy or move your mail to your
folders).

Best,

Kim

On May 3, 2008, at 5:03 AM, Kim Gammelgård wrote:

> I do it the other way around. I have a lot of filing rules in Mail,
> that file all my unread mail as soon as it reaches my inbox. The
> appropriate mailboxes then show me how many I have in each.
>
> In order to read my unread mail, I then have a smart mailbox with only
> the unread mail.
>
> In addition to that I have the following smart mailboxes: "read mail
> from today" that contains all mail from today that I have read -
> notice that the mail has already been filed in the appropriate folder
> and is accessible in this box anyway. Then I have a "read mail from
> this week" and a "read mail from this month". Finally I have a "sent
> mail from today" that only contains the mails I have sent today and
> one simply named "attachments".
>
> This way I never even have to think about asking mail to do auto-
> filing of my mail. (I do hand-file a lot of stuff, though, through the
> contextual menu, that lets you either copy or move your mail to your
> folders).

That's a clever solution. If Mail's rules contained simply the option
to act on mail that had not been read (as is possible when configuring
a smart mailbox), then I wouldn't have to go around the bend and back
to simply file read mail.

I will give your solution a try and see if it is comfortable for me.
Email is so highly personal, you know. Thanks for the tip!

There are two approaches: 1. Set up rules to filter mail messages at the time of download. I use this method because I have mailboxes set up by topic and attend to those messages in the most important topics first. I get to the less important ones when I have spare time. The only messages that remain in the inbox are those that are from new or infrequent mail authors. 2. Set up a mailbox to hold all unread mail messages downloaded. Read the entire list of messages and then filter that mailbox using an Automator script that has two conditions: a. selects that mailbox of that name, and b. selects an unread mail count of zero (0).

Mail is very powerful but the Help is hard to get the right answer from. You just have to keep playing with it.

regards, Centurion48

On May 6, 2008, at 2:42 AM, centurion48 wrote:

> There are two approaches: 1. Set up rules to filter mail messages at
> the time of download. I use this method because I have mailboxes set
> up by topic and attend to those messages in the most important
> topics first. I get to the less important ones when I have spare
> time. The only messages that remain in the inbox are those that are
> from new or infrequent mail authors. 2. Set up a mailbox to hold all
> unread mail messages downloaded. Read the entire list of messages
> and then filter that mailbox using an Automator script that has two
> conditions: a. selects that mailbox of that name, and b. selects an
> unread mail count of zero (0).
>

Of course, one of the strengths of Apple Mail is the ability to create
Smart Mailboxes that form a parallel system of filters. Using
alternative 1 above, you can also create a Smart Mailbox of all Unread
messages. If you keep a Mailbox column in your message viewer index,
you can then easily see all your unread messages and which mailboxes
they're in.

In my setup, I have over 100 subject mailboxes and directly filter
into and also have Smart Mailboxes for Unread Messages, Flagged
Messages, Today's Messages, Messages from the last 7 days, messages
received in the last 31 days. This lets me, without using additional
searches, process email by importance, read status, subject, or
timeliness.

Alan Forkosh Oakland, CA
aforkoshmac.com

I've abandoned my Inbox folder entirely. Instead, I use Smart Folders
to sort all of my mail.

All mail I receive automatically is moved from my Inbox folder to a
folder called "Archive". I then create a Smart Folder Inbox that
contains all email fetched in the last two days, or is unread. I use
this as my Inbox.

I then have other Smart Folders I use for mail to or from particular
users, subjects of interest, etc.

You could create several "Smart Folder" inboxes depending upon the
subject and user, then have other Smart Folders for you read and
unread messages.

By the way, Smart Folders show the number of unread messages in each
one, so creating special Inboxes for each of these Smart Folders might
be unnecessary.

Smart Folders add a lot of power to Apple's Mail program. We sometimes
don't realize how powerful that feature can be.

--
David Weintraub
qazwartgmail.com

On 7-May-2008, at 04:17, David Weintraub wrote:
> I've abandoned my Inbox folder entirely. Instead, I use Smart Folders
> to sort all of my mail.

I have done this since smart mailboxes were introduced. However, it
is not without its problems, pitfalls, shortcomings, and downfalls.

All my mail is sorted on the server into separate mailboxes. All
mailing lists are put into <listanme>/YYYY.MM.listname mbox files, for
example. Mail from family and friends is sorted into individual
mailboxes. Mail to plus delimited addresses is sorted as well. I
check 4-8 accounts daily, and all have extensive server side filtering
(procmail).

The trouble is that Mail's 'unread' smart mailbox will often not see
all the mail in all the mailboxes on all the accounts.

Which mail it fails to see is a bit of a mystery. The best workaround
appears to be frequently quitting and relaunching mail, but even then
I once happened to look in a mailbox for a friend I hadn't heard from
in a while and found three unread messages that I'd never seen before.
Before I clicked on the mailbox, mail.app had no indication there were
new messages in it.

I've missed some important emails because of this, so now, once a
week, I load up Thunderbird which will show me all the mailboxes with
unread mail. Yeah, Mail.app is supposed to do that, it just doesn't
do it 100% of the time.

I will say, it's better in Leopard than it was in Tiger, but I don't
think it is quite 100% yet.

> Smart Folders add a lot of power to Apple's Mail program. We sometimes
> don't realize how powerful that feature can be.

Just be wary of relying on it 100%.