Many of us think that Archiving is an unnecessary step when it comes to our emails. Most of our colleagues here at AppleToolBox do not even do it. They prefer to leave their incoming emails in their inbox and use “Mark as Read” and other flags to indicate actions that need to be performed on incoming emails. The most common response to not archiving that we have heard is “I keep my emails in my inbox so that I can easily find them”.
Archiving emails make it easy to manage your time as well as provide some structure. When you archive the emails that you are finished with, you are left with a clean inbox that has the mails that merit your attention. Clutter Free! No more loosing important emails. In this post we will show you a step by step guide that you can use to set up your archive mailbox and also automatically archive your mails.
Step – 1. Open your Mail application and click on Mailbox > New Mailbox
Step – 2 Designate a name for the new mailbox and choose a location from the dropdown. We suggest that you use “On my Mac” as the location and name it appropriately. We will use ATB_Archive as the folder name in this example.
Step – 3 Once you have set this up, the mailbox is available to you on the left side much like any other mailbox and you can drag and drop your emails manually once you are done with them.
Step – 4 Now comes the fun part of automating the archival process using Rules. Its pretty simple once you get the hang of it.
Step – 5 Click on Mail > Preferences. Click on Rules and choose Add rule
Step –6 Designate the mailbox folder to the one that you created in step 2.
Step – 6 Name the Rule in the description box and add conditions. You can add conditions such as email older than two weeks. Press the + button to add more conditions. You can get pretty specific here such as “All emails from sender x or sender y” is not archived. Save your rules.
Step – 7 Test it out and you are done. As soon as the emails in your inbox meet the rules that you have set up, your Mail will automatically move them out of your inbox into the local archive folder that you set up.
Sometimes, it’s the simple things that make us more productive. If you have ever opened your inbox and felt that you needed a drink, you are not alone. Please test the auto-archiving feature out and check it for yourself !
Obsessed with tech since the early arrival of A/UX on Apple, Sudz (SK) is responsible for the editorial direction of AppleToolBox. He is based out of Los Angeles, CA.
Sudz specializes in covering all things macOS, having reviewed dozens of OS X and macOS developments over the years.
In a former life, Sudz worked helping Fortune 100 companies with their technology and business transformation aspirations.
This does not work. Another site explains that only incoming emails are subjected to rules. So any one week old email will not be subjected to the rule and won’t be moved to the Archive folder. Obviously, any email just arriving will not be a week or more old, so it will sit in the inbox forever unless manually acted upon.
Still searching for a method to auto-archive old messages….
This isn’t going to compress those emails though (as an archive typically would). Instead, you are just storing a huge amount of emails into a single directory.
This does not work. Another site explains that only incoming emails are subjected to rules. So any one week old email will not be subjected to the rule and won’t be moved to the Archive folder. Obviously, any email just arriving will not be a week or more old, so it will sit in the inbox forever unless manually acted upon.
Still searching for a method to auto-archive old messages….
This isn’t going to compress those emails though (as an archive typically would). Instead, you are just storing a huge amount of emails into a single directory.
My Apple Mail archives automatically and I don’t have any rules that execute that behavior. Can you think of anything else that might be causing this?
Me too. My Apple Mail archives randomly & there are no rules in the rules box. It’s very annoying.