HT204093: Use Mail on your Mac
Learn about Use Mail on your Mac
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All replies
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Helpful answers
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Aug 20, 2015 7:47 AM in response to Ezechielby John Galt,Upon reaching it, Mail will not execute the remaining Rules actions. It is useful subsequent to performing actions that obviate the need to execute the remaining actions.
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Aug 20, 2015 7:50 AM in response to John Galtby Ezechiel,Perhaps you could use plain English. I don't understand.
I have had a stop to rules for at least a few emails and I don't know why.
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Aug 20, 2015 7:57 AM in response to Ezechielby John Galt,Ezechiel wrote:
Perhaps you could use plain English. I don't understand.
I don't understand "I have had a stop to rules for at least a few emails". We could go on not understanding like this for a long time.
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Aug 20, 2015 11:00 AM in response to Ezechielby Barney-15E,It means, stop (cease, terminate, quit) evaluating (interpretting, running, testing) rules.
I.e. don't process any more rules that follow this one on the message that is currently being evaluated.
There's no hidden meaning. It does what it says.
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Mar 8, 2016 2:55 PM in response to Ezechielby iHumanPro,Rule ordering and 'Stop Evaluating Rules' actually server a purpose when you're working with complex rules. For example, lets say you want to send an auto-reply to all emails that come into a specific account (mail@example.com) that you have -- unless it is person@thisdomain.com who writes. I'll create two rules to make this happen:
rule 1:
- if ALL
- Account -> mail@example.com
- From -> Contains -> person@thisdomain.com
Perform the following action:
- Stop Evaluating Rules
This basically covers the 'exception' to your rule. No rules below the current one will affect the message from person@thisdomain.com
rule 2:
- if ALL
- Account -> mail@example.com
Perform the following action:
- Run AppleScript -> MyCustomAutoreponder
- Stop Evaluating Rules
This second rule, will send my auto reply message to all emails that come to my mail@example.com address - except from person@thisdomain.com - because that was handled in the previous script.
In my opinion - it's a convoluted way to work. But it does work.
What would be preferable is how rules are created in other applications like Marketcircle's Daylite. They allow 'sub-queries'. (AND/OR queries) If Apple had this built in, the example above could be done with one rule. For example:
- if ALL
- Account -> mail@example.com
- if ANY
- From -> Does Not Contain -> person@thisdomain.com
- From -> Does Not Contain ->anotherexemptperson@thisdomain.com
Perform the following action:
- Run AppleScript -> MyCustomAutoreponder
- Stop Evaluating Rules
Mail Rules would be so much more powerful if Apple designed them this way...but they didn't. So we are stuck with the more complex, 'rule ordering' and 'stop evaluating rule' method'.
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Jun 3, 2016 3:31 PM in response to iHumanProby tudobem,Thanks for taking the time to actually answer the question. So helpful!