Mail (Mavericks): Manage messages using rules
Set up rules to automatically perform actions, such as file, forward, or highlight messages.
If you use iCloud Documents & Data, your rules are available on your other Mac computers (with OS X v10.8 or later) that have iCloud Documents & Data turned on. Files attached to rules, such as sound files or scripts, aren’t available.
Create rules
- Choose Mail > Preferences, then click Rules.
To review an example of a rule, select a provided rule, then click Edit. To close the rule, click Cancel.
- Click Add Rule, then type a name for the rule.
- Indicate whether any one or all of the conditions must be true for the rule to be applied to a message.
- Specify the conditions.
To use different header fields in conditions, choose Edit Header List from the first pop-up menu. To add your own header, click Add (+) in the Message Headers window.
- Choose actions to perform on messages that meet the conditions. To specify multiple actions, click Add (+).
If you have multiple rules, they’re applied in the order in which they appear in the list of rules. Drag a rule up or down in the list to change its order.
Apply rules
- To apply rules to messages in mailboxes, select the messages, then choose Message > Apply Rules.
- When you disable an account, rules applied to the account’s mailboxes are also disabled; you must enable the rules again after you reenable the account
- Mail stops applying rules when the Stop Evaluating Rules action is used, or when a message is transferred to another mailbox by rules used on a server or on a computer or device synced to your computer.