Mail rules sending emails to archive, not to the folder I want them to go to

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Level 1

4 points

Mail rules sending emails to archive, not to the folder I want them to go to

I've started making some new rules on the mail app today to help break up my inbox and make things manageable. For some reason, whilst I am in the folder I am adding a rule for (if email is from "xyz", send to folder "abc") when I hit apply, the ones i had already moved there manually that applied to the rule disappeared.

It took a few moments to find the emails were archived, so luckily I hadnt lost them, but why is this happening?

I tested this in another folder and the same thing happened. It removed the relevant emails from the folder I wanted to have them sent to and from the inbox and archived them. The rule clearly has the right information and without any mention of archive whatsoever.

MacBook Air

Posted on Feb 15, 2023 4:56 AM

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Answer 1

KiltedTim

Level 10

223,524 points

Feb 15, 2023 9:01 AM in response to Bettsboy1

Gmail’s IMAP implementation is horribly non-standard.

Absolutely everything is in “All Mail” which the Mac and most other mail clients refer to as the ‘archive’.

There aren’t actually any folders at all in gmail, just ‘virtual folders’ that are actually just tags associated with the messages on the gmail server.

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Answer 2

Feb 15, 2023 5:24 AM in response to Bettsboy1

Let me see if I understood: if you have messages in your Inbox, and make a rule like this:

to move messages to some mailbox (let's call it "A").

Are the messages already in "A" archived? Or the messages in the Inbox that were supposed to be moved to "A" are archived instead?

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Answer 3

Bettsboy1 Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 15, 2023 8:20 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Yep thats exactly right!

Are the messages already in "A" archived? Or the messages in the Inbox that were supposed to be moved to "A" are archived instead?

I dont believe they were already archived. Any messages that weren't manually in "A" already before I made the rule were supposed to be moved into "A" once the rule was applied, as you've shown in your screenshot.

It appears the messages are at least removed from "A" as when I apply the rule as above, the ones in there that had applied to the rule just disappear. And when I went looking, they were in the archive.

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Answer 4

Feb 15, 2023 8:50 AM in response to Bettsboy1

I think that the information about this being a gmail account may be very relevant.

I have had several occasions where messages to my gmail account fail to appear, and I go and find them in the archive.

I am not sure if any rules were involved in my case, but this thread will get me to investigate this further.

On the other hand, I have other accounts (iCloud, and some POP and Exchange accounts), and I never saw anything like it in those accounts.

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Answer 5

Bettsboy1 Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 15, 2023 9:17 AM in response to KiltedTim

The main confusion I have is that I had set some other similar rules a couple of months ago and they worked as intended. It's only today that this has happened after setting up a new one for a new folder.

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