Mac Mail Rules massive problem

Thanks skelly714, in my time of need your words were there for me. As emails were flying out left, right and centre and I was having a mild panic attack... Your advice has just saved me a lot more embarrassment than could have been!

For anyone else encountering this problem let me just repeat the advice to stop the rule in its tracks: "disable the mail account which is causing the problem (in preferences) I personally just un-ticked the mail icon, shut down and re-start the computer."

Thanks again 🙂

I know the original post is a couple of years old, but I just went through this nightmare scenario. I am a huge fan of all things Apple, but why on Earth does Apple have to be so unintuitive at times? Why not just have a normal "out of office" type of feature that is found in every other email program that I have ever used? Out of Office/Auto Reply: Starting Time, Ending Time, Message you want to use, DONE. Why go through the "Rules" feature that makes it so easy to SEND A SMURFING EMAIL TO EVERYONE WHO HAS EVER EMAILED YOU SINCE THE BEGINNING OF TIME? Ok, fine, there is a "Warning" once you set up a rule:

But really, to me, it's saying 2 different things and could be more clear. I read "active rules will always be applied to new messages" and thought, hey great, sounds good to me. I thought it was just asking me to apply my rule to the inbox selected: ie: "This" mailbox. Not, please apply my rule to EVERY EMAIL I HAVE EVER RECEIVED TO THIS INBOX SINCE THE BEGINNING OF TIME. I click "Apply" and now my message goes out to EVERY EMAIL THAT I HAVE EVER RECEIVED SINCE THE BEGINNING OF TIME. I'll take the blame for not fully understanding what I was clicking on, but really, this issue could be easily addressed by the team at Apple in a variety of ways. For smurf's sake - click "DON'T APPLY!"

Your problem, hardware or software, may not be exactly the same as that of the original poster of this older thread, and it can be very confusing for everybody if we try to answer more than one question in each thread, which can also result in you applying the wrong advice to your particular problem.

In order for us to give your problem our proper attention to try to solve it, would you kindly start your own thread, describing the trouble you are having in the fullest detail, including completing your details to show what Mac or iDevice you are using, what operating system, and what version of the application in question. Please remember to post in the forum relevant to your hardware or version of OS X. A full list of all the support forums is here:

http://discussions.apple.com/index.jspa

A rule cannot continue acting if you have deleted it. Are you entirely certain you deleted it from your rule list in Mail? Go to Mail -> Preferences -> Rules and make absolutely sure that rule is not in that list. Also, if there are other rules, be sure that none of them include an auto-reply.

Also, I'm not sure what you mean when you say you accidentally clicked "Apply"... there is no such button. There is an Apply Rules menu item (with a shortcut command-option-L). Is that what you are referring to? If so, note that that is a one-time action. It runs the rule once on the selected messages, which would cause the rule to send an auto-reply once to the messages that were currently selected.

If you are 100% sure none of your rules are sending auto-replies and people are still getting auto-replies from you, you must have created an auto-reply some other way. Perhaps you set a vacation message on your e-mail server, by logging in to web mail and setting a vacation message preference there.

The Apply/Don't Apply buttons you're referring to relate to either acceping or undoing the changes you have made to the preferences. Apply simply meant "keep the changes I have made."

I have no idea what's going on. There's no way your mail rules are doing this, because you don't have any rules. Is it possible that you are using MobileMe to sync mail rules to other devices? If so, it's possible the rule got synced to another device and is still active there.

By the way, the screenshot you posted has a LOT of personal information in it! Six of your own e-mail addresses, one of your web host, a ticket ID from your web host support, among other things. Posting that kind of information in a forum like this is a very bad idea. I have asked the hosts to remove that link, but you would be well advised to remove the screenshot itself from the server you've got it on.

Go to System Preferences -> MobileMe and click the Sync tab, then make sure to uncheck the item reading "Mail Rules, Signatures and Smart Mailboxes." That will not remove rules that have been synced to another Mac, however... you'll need to check Mail on any other Macs that you sync with MobileMe. You can also check the rule settings on MobileMe itself by logging in at www.me.com and going to the Mail applet's settings, though that will only affect incoming mail on that MobileMe account. (Is this happening for all your accounts or for one specific account? Try testing by having someone send you mail at several different accounts, then they can let you know which account sent back replies for which messages.)

I have made this mistake too, I was not concentrating and hit "Apply" in the dialogue box that was asking if I'd like to apply this rule to selected mail boxes and their content. As a result my clients started receiving my out-of-office email for EVERY message in my inbox. This is rather embarrassing and although I removed the rule as soon as I realised what I'd done, a hefty amount of replies were sent. Now, as these do not appear in my "sent" box then how do I check who has received the message?

This just happened to me as well! I hit "apply" and it started sending a million emails out. I know, because I got 177 "MAILER DAEMON" emails from do-not-reply accounts. Holy cow. That means that anyone that's emailed me in my inbox got not only ONE 'out of office' email, but one for every single email they've written me that's still in my inbox. This is horrible.

The main problem is that when I click "Don't Apply," the auto reply doesn't work at all! So what am I supposed to do? Either it applies it to my entire current inbox, or not at all.

Same thing happened to me. It's very embarrassing as it's my work account. Not what I want to be dealing with on vacation. Deleted rule just a couple of hours later and am still getting emails two days later bounced back to me and from people who PO'd.I've also gone to my icloud account and deleted syncing mail messages although it wasn't this account that I applied the rule to.

I'm used to Apple hardware and software working incredibly well/intuitively for years and am absolutely stunned that this has happened. Really don't get why something as common as an out of office reply could be so hard to do.

UGGHH This just happened to me! SO annoying, I'm so frustrated that Mail would even allow me to do this without some kind of warning. I've deleted the rule and done everything I could to make it stop, but now I want to somehow apologize to all of my clients that just got a bazilion emails from me.

Does anyone know if there is any way to send out an email to everyone that has contacted me?

Thanks,

Chris

p.s. Laura if you happen to be the Laura Murray that is an awesome film photographer this is a super small world haha 😉

Fairly old discussion. But I was reminded of the first time I was asked, as in-house IT, to set up vacation mail for employees. I found instructions on using Apple Rules to do this. I implemented; and I GOT THE EXACT SAME RESULTS! Mail started sending out auto-replies to ALL mail in my inbox; and NOT just applying to new mail. What a nightmare. That was a long time ago; and so very disconcerting to see that others are still having this issue!

As great as Mac is, there are several major issues:

Spotlight Search does NOT always find files/folders that are definitely there

Mac Mail has SEVERAL issues, including wacky Rules issues - having totally new Rules nightmare, which is how I found this discussion.

Mac Mail also has major issues witth staying connected to server and with passwords, since Lion/Mt Lion.

Very disappointing, since I have been a Mac user, since OS 6.0 (before color!).

CL

This has happened to two colleagues in my office, most recently this afternoon, to my assistant. As soon as she realized what was happening, she deleted the rule, but the e-mails didn't stop until she disabled her mail program (in preferences), shut down and re-started her computer.

What a pain. I hope this is helpful to someone in the future. Happy Thanksgiving! May your inboxes remain free of such problems.