Mail rules

Winston Churchill wrote:

Still running OS10.14 here due to there being no 64 bit accounting software available to me, using Mail v12.4.

Yesterday, all my Mail rules disappeared from preferences.

Judging by the times the mail stopped being moved from one folder to another under the rules that disappeared, I was on a train at the time around 60 miles away from my Mac. (my mac would have been awake though)

Have restarted to no avail, I'm probably able to rebuild the rules reasonably easily, but it kinda concerns me why this happened.

Anyone have any insight.

Well good question— is this an @icloud mail or other provider?

Knowing if the Mac still has the rules intact would be insightful...

Did you could try logging out of iCloud and signing back in?

Use rules to manage emails you receive in Mail on Mac .

Set up rules to filter email in Mail on iCloud.com - Apple Support

Winston Churchill wrote:

It's v6.

That preference file only has a couple of rules in it that I wrote after the disappearance of the originals. I can see and restore the original via TM. If they'd just become corrupt, I'd be able to see something wouldn't I?

Perhaps related or not. Not been in the library on this Mac before and didn't expect to see these documents amongst the folders, any idea what they are?

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/3a8e3091-3cce-44dd-a7a5-ab5bacdb8d98

A curiosity but I don't see how those would be related (?)

If you open those plist— there should be some clue as to what they are...

I do see some related post concerning Etcher and "mixpanel"

https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/129680/why-does-mixpanel-a-tracking-service-save-plist-files-to-my-mac

I don't see anything similar in my ~/Library line up in Catalina— so I would suspect 3rd party.

Winston Churchill wrote:

Yesterday, all my Mail rules disappeared from preferences.

Judging by the times the mail stopped being moved from one folder to another under the rules that disappeared, I was on a train at the time around 60 miles away from my Mac. (my mac would have been awake though)

This is in the Mail app preferences on my Mac and it's all the rules I've created over the years that have disappeared.

I have several iCloud accounts and several non iCloud accounts in the mail app. It doesn't matter whether rules apply specifically to mail associated with an iCloud account, specifically to a non iCloud account or to both, they have all disappeared.

It could be simply a corrupt plist. SyncedRules.plist

Is your Mojave mail V6 ? (Catalina is V7)

You don't want to lose the rules. I would look here, copy or move to Desktop... rebuild ( ?)

~/Library/Mail/V6/MailData/SyncedRules.plist

The way forward might be restoring this file from a Time Machine back-up, or restoring the V6 folder before the corruption. There are other rules .plist in the folder ~/Library/Mail/V6/MailData

Quit Mail

Restore plist file or V6

Restart Mail