Booooo-lean

Okay, here's another little thing that I would have expected Apple to do right. I've been using Mail since I started using Macs, which is only 15 months or so. I never bothered to complain about this, but it's high time I did.

One thing I'd expect from any mail filter or rule is the ability to really filter mail. First, Mail doesn't even filter the mail except at startup and after you've created a new rule and answer "Yes" to the prompt. To top it off, it is so extremely limited in what it can do. What I want is boolean operators. I want to be able to control how my mail is filtered right down to the knitty-gritty. I want ALL fields available. For example, I have a friend who sends me mostly junk mail. I know it is mostly junk mail, but I'd hate to trash a legitimate message that might actually be directed to ME, and I don't have the time or energy to filter through it all. So, how would I do this if I had Boolean?

First, I would set my rule to keep messages for a day or two in the inbox, just long enough for me to mark a message that I know I want to read. Then I'd have it look for all my friends messages in my inbox and move those I want to read to a folder for later, while trashing those that I have not marked.

You'd think this was pretty simple, not really a need for boolean either, but since there is no option to say: "if not flagged, then delete", I'm stuck with manually managing his messages. But with more powerful rules, I could have it operate on many things at once and distinguish between them. In one rule I should be able to handle ALL my friends mail, deleting those I don't want and moving those I do. I should not have to create two rules, and I'd still have to manually handle the flagged messages because Mail does not offer any alternative.

There are work-arounds though. Mail Act-On is a nice free utility that allows you to set rules to keystrokes (and anyone who knows about Mail's subpar rule handling will be familiar with the fact that they are only run upon startup of mail, not when messages are sent or received. In fact, it doesn't seem to work on sent mail at all). The important aspect is that you can run a mail filter or rule with a simple keystroke, and you can assign one keystroke to several rules. This is effectively saying that you can tell it to execute one rule, then the next, and it will keep things straight. It still doesn't fix the fact that I don't want a flagged message deleted, but I want it moved. I'm sure that there are Applescripts out there that can do these kinds of things. But the lack of ability to run rules based on color coding, flagging, or even on Read status is depressing indeed.

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