[MlMt] best practices for diagnosing rules that aren't working..

[Henry Seiden]

Rick,

Be advised that Rules in MM are by their nature designed to be exact & specific. This guidance is basic. You’re on your own discovering how to develop the exact rule that fits your own goals. I’m happy to give you general advice on a user-to-user basis, not writing it for you.

Seems to me from your email, your issue is simply mis-coding.

Certainly, I would get what you are seeking wrong 100% of the time. Why? Because I’m flying blind, even with your described  settings  and desired actions in possible translation to a real setting (see next),  dependent on your version.  I have developed similar rules ion my own (which mostly have to do with deleting junk mail and expired/deleted mail), therefore my advice is based on a certain experience with them that might help you.

Three questions and a suggestion:
1. What version of MM are you using and what release in that version? I have, for example v1.14 experimental v6059. It works pretty well for me. V6065 is the latest experimental release, but has reliability issues in Rules for me, so I backed out the last version that didn’t have issues that caused me problems.

2. Where are you starting from in Rules? There is no Condition as shown: “Address”. Are you sure you are selection a condition and not a source Mailbox in your Rules. Hint: there is no such thing there either. Conditions are applicable to Mailboxes chosen previously.

3. What Smart (or Source) Mailbox(es) are you setting your Rules to apply to anyway? Likewise here, there is no Source shown as Address. You should use the pulldown tabs to select the Conditions. Your choices are specific MM named pulldown items which apply uniformly to ALL Sources OR to specific Source named mailboxes set in your IMAP settings in MM. These rules have to be specific and exact. Yes, you can have multiple rules and set the conditions to ALL applied to those particular conditions selected.

4. For troubleshooting and your own familiarity, I’ve found it easiest to make a simple rule, for 1 Mailbox and 1 condition. Then try to add a non-destructive action and see if that works to your satisfaction when manually applied (Mailbox>Apply Rules>All Messages). One step at a time. Then, when your rule is built and you know the action is correct, recommend you set the conditions of the action within the Action Statement and have it performed (maybe limiting to one particular email selection, so you can observe the rule activity in the SmartMailbox containing that in the mailbox selection,Conditions, Rule limitations+Actions. You’ll see there are tabs within the Rules (sometimes showing as icons where you can hover to reveal text in them).

Enjoy discovering MM powerful rules! Happy New Year.

Respectfully,

Henry Seiden
- -
Techworks Pro Co.
E: info<at>techworkspro<dot>com
W: http://techworkspro.com

On 10 Dec 2024, at 14:25, Rick Flower wrote:

> From Address is —> Grovemade hello at grovemade.com
> From Address is -> Credit Karma notifications at notifications4.creditkarma.com
> From Address is -> Dutch Bros Coffee goodvibes at members2.dutchbros.com
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