What happens with rules in the mail?

I am so frustrated with Apple over the Mail issue I can't stand it. There is more than just a lot of noise about Lion mail rules not working, the program is a bust and the denials that there is no problem with Mail is just so 90's Microsoftian. The truth is that email is like air and if you don't have air you die. What we're seeing is that Mail Rules send incoming mail from all sources into the wrong folders. All of the filters that worked as written on OS 10.5.8 do not work on Lion. Redoing the rules produces about a 10% success rate. I've been on Apple computers since 1985 and co-started the first Mac-based animation company in Dallas in 1991 and this is the worst fumble of software that I've seen. And yet all the responses to this problem seem to treat everyone as first time users who want to email pictures of their kitty to Mom while totally ignoring those of us who make a living with technology. Fix it!

I agree - the 'Lion impact on email' problem is frustrating and VERY irritating. I have missed emails which got rerouted incorrectly, while finding lots of emails sitting in my Inbox when they should be elsewhere. All this despite rewriting or adding to the rules in an effort to get them routed correctly.

I am also concerned, but haven't clearly nailed yet, a problem with appointments 'dropping out' of Ical - possibly due to faulty Synching - again 'since Lion'.

a bug i have encountered several times now on 10.7.3:

after mail fails to connect to the imap account (don't know why - it's certainly not offline), all rules

are deactivated and have to be switched on manually again...

it also seems that sometimes even activated rules are ignored but i could not verify it yet...

ps:

waiting for 10.8 because apple seems to not care about the bugs in lion.....

Mail in my LIon (10.7.3.) account is an absolute MESS. Although it can handle the 'mac' mail it cannot cope with my btinternet account. I have twice made visits to the Apple store where a genius will set it up but overnight it loses all the account settings, despite being locked and the account has to be deleted and set up again.

I have sought help from btinternet - whose online advice for Mac users is still at Leopard level - they blame Mac, which automatically sets up incorrect servers.

Currently I have to delete and reload the bt account in mail every day and have had to rearrange as many external mail souces as possible to send mail to the Mac account. However I have hundreds of contacts all over the world who have been using my same email address for almost 20 years.

An update to Lion to solve mail problems is long overdue. My impression is that OSX users are way down the list now in favour of IOS users. Perhaps Mountain Lion has better mail ?

Sorry - I failed to mention the rules aspect.

Mail under OSX 10.7.3 in my system simply cannot cope with rules unless the mail is addressed to the mac account. I have now established rules for the mac account which mirror rules previously applied to my btinternet account. Usres who send to the mac account get ruted correctly - most of the time but not all. Mail cannot properly sort email from senders using the btaccount.

Like others here I have been a Mac user for many years (my first was an Apple IIe in the 1970s) and this is one of the biggest screwups I have known from Apple - with a new experience that Mac simply doesn't seem to care.

( even the Mac Store genuises are cynical - 'oh, dont use that - it doesn't work' ....)

I am a long time Apple user too and I am not impressed with Mail OSX in Lion. Now I have a problem where mail read or deleted reappears as unread mail. It appears now that this is the rule moving mails to specific mac account mail boxes is screwing this up as stopping the rules and leaving it in the original iMAP inbox show the problem is gone. All this after I switched to iCloud which is not the greatest thing after sliced bread Apple want you to believe it is. I now turned off all rules because I am wasting a lot of time reopening and rereading emails I already dealt with. Not impressed at all.

In my earlier note in March I said that 'rules' seem only to work properly if the mail is addressed to my Mac account.

I can , three months later, report that the rules seem to be working perfectly - because I now only make rules involving my mac account and have changed my mail address on various forums and groups to suit.

I have,however, meanwhile, noticed that mail read and deleted on one device ( laptop, Ipad, Itouch) is not necassarily deleted back on the server and turns up on other devices as unread mail. I suspect this may only be true of mail to non-Mac addresses.

I have also, after some research, discovered that any mail related to Yahoo ( including bt internet mail) becomes totally chaotic if 'push' technology is used. This is because - if you are accessing Yahoo mail on any device and the Mac server starts 'pushing' mail to another of your devices, Yahoo will disconnect the mail you are accessing - in the belief that a second user is signing on .....

MORAL: Any form of Yahoo mail does not allow 'push' email on any device.

So you are saying that your @mac.com or @me.com email address do not have any problem ? I think this is what I see as well. my mac.com address all works fine although I will doublecheck this. It is godaddy domain and nativespace hosted domain adddress that do not work with rules well rules work, mails get transferred to chosen mailboxes Mac account but the unread delete problem is screwing up things and mails keep reappearing. As soon as I turn off the rules all is fine. But then I need to transfer all myself manually. I find all this very disappointing. This technology is here to make life and work easier which Apple products always did for me but for such a major application central to what you do when working on Macs, not acceptable that this sort of problems persists. Do not use yahoo addresses. I have another problem too: mails with an attachment become gibberish and attachment can not be opened. When I go on webmail the uncorrupted file is there and downloadable. I need to see whether this problem alos disappeared when turning off the rules. It is not a given byt the way sometimes it happens sometimes it does not and it has happened with two addresses form a different domain name

Just saw the delete and unread problem also is a problem with my @mac.com account. Driving me nuts this. I suspect now this is an iCloud problem

If you want someone to help, then you need to provide specifics to your problem.

For everyone else, I use Mail rules and they work great. Rules applied in Mail have nothing to do with various accounts and providers. They only act on the criteria that you set. Manually moving a message or using a rule to move a message will have the same results despite the provider. Also, incorrectly setting up a rule such as not putting Stop Evaluating Rules at the end of the results might allow another rule under it to apply different results. It's possible a corrupt file might be giving problems and rules may not be working correctly.

Rules only apply to unread messages downloaded to the inbox. If the messages are read on a different device before downloaded to the computer with the rules set, then the rules won't apply to those messages. You can select the messages and manually apply the rules though.

Mail's rules may not be as advanced as some other mail applications, but they do work fine. You can also add an application to better enhance Mail's rules. I believe Mail Act On is one of those.

I would just say if you have a specific problem, post your own discussion with your problem where someone might be able to help you.

Hi Glenn

Thanks for taking the time to reply. You are right but I have tried to get feedback by posting myself but no or little useful response I am afraid. But I did provide specifics to the problem I am facing see earlier post.

In any case I elarnt something but my problem is still there, I now stop using rules for the moment. My provider Godaddy suggested to remove email accounts and reinstall as they suspect account is corrupted.

Many thanks

nlesh

The OP (mariaclaudiaz) posted a question with no specifics as to his problem. I was trying to get him to post more info since he posted the question. Seems 5 other people jumped in on his post with different situations.

I'm not exactly sure if I understand your problem of read and unread messages, but I doubt that rules are causing your issue.

If you post it in a new discussion with better details, I will look for it and respond to you there. You might also put the details of your rule that you believe is causing the problem.