I have been using Rules for having my email go to certain mailboxes. However, many times an error will come up stating that the email cannot be moved because the mailbox does not exist. But it does! I go to Rules sure enough the mailbox is not "chosen" for said email when I know that I did choose it. What am I doing wrong? I use yahoo for my email server. I am using the latest OS on iMac and MacBook Air
iMac 21.5″ 4K, macOS 11.4
Hi bksansoo,
Thanks for reaching out using Apple Support Communities. Here to help.
We understand you are experiencing troubles with mailbox rules executing properly.
You mentioned multiple computers. This is occurring on both? If occurring on multiple clients or devices, this may indicate a server side problem.
Do you recall if you had set these Rules up directly in the Mac Mail app, or on Yahoo's website? It may be helpful to sign in using webmail to see if the mailbox folders you are having trouble with are visible on the email providers webmail page. You may also be able to set up similar rules directly with Yahoo. See their support page regarding filtering rules at the link below.
Use filters to organize Yahoo Mail
You may also wish to edit or recreate your rules directly in Mail using the instructions outlined below.
Use rules to manage emails you receive in Mail on Mac
Hope this helps! Take care for now.
Hi bksansoo,
Thanks for reaching out using Apple Support Communities. Here to help.
We understand you are experiencing troubles with mailbox rules executing properly.
You mentioned multiple computers. This is occurring on both? If occurring on multiple clients or devices, this may indicate a server side problem.
Do you recall if you had set these Rules up directly in the Mac Mail app, or on Yahoo's website? It may be helpful to sign in using webmail to see if the mailbox folders you are having trouble with are visible on the email providers webmail page. You may also be able to set up similar rules directly with Yahoo. See their support page regarding filtering rules at the link below.
Use filters to organize Yahoo Mail
You may also wish to edit or recreate your rules directly in Mail using the instructions outlined below.
Use rules to manage emails you receive in Mail on Mac
Hope this helps! Take care for now.
Hi bksansoo,
Thank you for the kind follow up and additional information.
Is this occurring to all of your mailboxes which you have rules for, or does it just seem to be a certain mailbox?
Just to isolate the issue a bit further, could you try creating a new mailbox and applying a new rule to see if emails can be moved to this new mailbox? If this works, but some of your other mailboxes do not, it could mean there is some sort of damage to the path. If this is the case, it may be best to create a new Mailbox and move your existing messages to it.
Do you use any other email accounts on your Mac? You can also test the behavior with other email providers to isolate the issue further.
If this doesn't help, or if the issue seems to apply to all of your mailboxes, this may be best handled in a direct support case with Apple Support. You can review support options at the link below.
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities! Feel free to reply to let us know the result of the above steps. Take care for now.
So far I have deleted the offending mailboxes and then re-added them and deleted the Preference Rule and then re-added it. Only doing this with Apple Mail as I deleted all the mailboxes from the Yahoo account. Sometimes it works. When it doesn't, I I have deleted the mailbox again and in Preferences I use the existing rule but send the email to a different mailbox. For example, if I have a mailbox named "Misc" and use Preferences for a rule named "Misc" with the parameter that anything that contains "misc" in the "From" gets sent to the "Misc" mailbox and it doesn't get sent there, then I delete the mailbox and then in Preferences I change where the message will be sent, say a mailbox that already exists called "Etc". That seems to work. Now I'll go back and name a new mailbox "Misc" and go back to Preferences and have the email sent to the "Misc" mailbox (and remove "Etc" as the "where it will be sent" mailbox). Whew- it sounds long and a pain (it is), but it seems to work so far. Will keep you updated.
Thank you for your reply. I had set up the rules in both Mac Mail and on Yahoo's mail website. I thought there may be a conflict, so I deleted all the rules on Yahoo's mail website. This did not help. Still get the same message stating that there is no mailbox for some incoming mail, when clearly there is. Could it be a problem with embedded mailboxes- i.e. I have a mailbox called "Advertisements" and underneath that mailbox I have numerous mailboxes.
I see this problem with both my MacBook Air and iMac.
Thank you again for replying. The problem only seems to be with certain mailboxes. I do use other email accounts in Mail, however, I don't have too many mailboxes for them. I will try your suggestion of deleting some of the "offending" mailboxes and see what happens. My other mail account(s) are in google - 2 to be exact. The "offending" mailbox is one account in Yahoo in which I get the majority emails. I have 3 other Yahoo accounts, but only have a couple of mailboxes in those (I haven't paid too much attention to them since I only get a few emails from a few contacts, but I will investigate those, too)
Update: So far deleting all the filters from Yahoo!Mail site is giving me error messages for many, many emails. So now what I am doing is adding back the filters on Yahoo's site to see if that works. Only doing it for a few mailboxes as adding back in all the filters is very time consuming and I don't want to waste my time doing that if it doesn't work.
When I see the result from the above- if it hasn't worked then I will delete all the rules from Apple mail for those sites in which I added filters in Yahoo.
Maybe Google mail works as a better fit for Apple mail? Any opinions on this?
Hi bksansoo,
Feel free to let us know what you find out. Perhaps it will help others in similar scenarios as well!
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities. Have a good one!
Rules in email
