Rules are More About Structure Than Loss of Freedom – Same Applies to Mac Mail Rules and Here’s How to Use Them.
Mac Mail Rules for Better Organization
Some people don’t like the word “Rules.” It implies loss of freedom and confinement to a particular set of methodologies. A well-built set of rules are more like structure than loss of freedom. Same applies to the rules in Mac Mail that can help you better organize your data and de-stress you from numerous emails you receive every day.
Getting all those emails organized so you can focus on what’s urgent, keep important but non-urgent on a backburner, and simply avoid spam/useless emails…can be exhausting. But you don’t have to do it all alone. Here’s how you can smartly use Mac Mail “rules” to help you out.
These rules can be applied anyway you want to the incoming emails (and existing ones) and are automatically organized in ways you want them to. You can also understand them through if-then statements, which means that you have to specify what happens when a condition is met.
You can set multiple rules or just one, apply them to existing ones or to the incoming ones or both. In this example, let’s just focus on one particular rule, which is applied to incoming emails.
How to Add Rules in Apple Mail
Example:
Move all your emails from an international client into an “international clients” folder.
- First, if you don’t already have that folder, you need to create it with the name, “International Clients.” (from Mailbox menu, select New Mailbox, choose the location for the new folder, give the name to the folder, and click “OK.”).
- Then, go to the “Preferences” from Menu and click on “Rules” and then “Add Rule.” Give it a name, in this case, you can set “International clients”.
- You will get few options in the next step. In this case, select “any” from the “if” dropdown menu, select “Any Recipient,” select “contains,” and then enter the email address of your client into the text field.
- Now select the “move” option and select the folder “International clients”.
- Click “OK”.
You have successfully created one rule where all your emails from one email address (your client, in the example above) will automatically be moved to your “International Client” folder.
You can specify many other type of conditions and what happens when that is met. There is a lot of flexibility in what you can do and how you can manage your emails more smartly and productively. And when the default conditions are not enough for the level of functionality you want, you can also add your own custom AppleScripts.
Please note that the rules applied in Mac Mail (App) can also be applied to iCloud if you have iCloud turned on, except the ones with Apple Script; they don’t sync.