Mail rule does not work

Question

Mail rule does not work

My computer is a Mac mini with Mojave.

I have more than 7000 emails in my Mac's Mail inbox. In order to be able reduce this number by deleting mail more than a year old, I created an 'Old Mail' inbox and a rule to move all mail more than 365 days old into it. All this did was to move a single mail received today (!) into it. What am I doing wrong? Should I have placed the 'Old Mail' inbox somewhere else? I attach two screen-shots. (The references to Val Coumont are because my wife uses my computer for her mails and I have created an account for her on it.)

Any advice will be much appreciated.

Mac mini, macOS 10.14

Posted on May 26, 2020 12:32 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

BobTheFisherman

Level 10

85,165 points

May 26, 2020 12:42 PM in response to Michael Graubart

Did you manually run the rule or were you expecting it to automatically run? Rules only automatically run on incoming emails not on emails already downloaded.

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Answer 2

May 26, 2020 2:39 PM in response to Michael Graubart

Use rules to manage emails you receive in Mail on Mac - Apple Support

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Answer 3

May 28, 2020 10:43 AM in response to Michael Graubart

My computer is a Mac mini with Mojave.

Further to the above, in Mail/Rules, there is the condition that I have tried to use, but have run into trouble with, namely ‘Date received’ — ‘is greater than’ - ‘X days old’. Is there a limit to the value of ‘X’? Does it have to be a single-digit number?

In order to move emails more than a year old out of my inbox and into a specified mailbox ‘on my Mac’, I set X to 365. The result was that almost all my emails were deleted, and nothing was moved to the designated inbox on my Mac. I should be very grateful for further advice.

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Answer 4

May 26, 2020 12:49 PM in response to BobTheFisherman

Thank you very much. Yes, I was expecting it to run automatically. So how do I run it manually?

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Answer 5

May 26, 2020 2:51 PM in response to BobTheFisherman

Thank you again, BobTheFisherman. That, I am sure, has now solved my problem.

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Mail rule does not work

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