[MlMt] Smart Mailboxes and Rules

[Zvi Biener]

PS. I forgot this part: the best I could come up with is having a rule on the inbox that checks whether the message is captured by the relevant smart mailbox, and then act accordingly. (So the sorting logic is in the smart mailbox, but the action logic is in the Inbox). But it would be nice to have the sorting and action logic in the same place.

On 27 Aug 2026, at 23:33, Zvi Biener wrote:

> Hi All,
> Can rules be automatically applied by a smart mailbox? An earlier thread in the list archive suggests that they can, but I can’t make it work.
>
> I have a smart mailbox with condition X. When a new message arrives in the Inbox and matches X, I can see it in the smart mailbox. But the rules of the smart mailbox are not applied automatically. I can only apply them manually. I can understand why that might be the preferred/necessary behavior, but a previous thread suggested otherwise. So I’m trying to confirm.
>
> (You might ask why I don’t have the rules applied in the Inbox itself. The reason is that I use 2 mail clients. When the non-MM mail client gets the message first (even if it remains unread), MM does not see the message as new, and so does not apply the Inbox rules. Or, at least, that’s what I think is happening. I tried to avoid this by using smart mailboxes, but it looks like they don’t track a ‘new’ status within them… thus trying to confirm the above).
>
> Thanks,
> Zvi