Applying rules to sent mail

[KenDRhyD]

Is there any way to have rules apply to sent mail? Specifically, mail that is being sent to certain addresses (or replies) should be moved to the same folder as mail received from those same addresses, and there may be a number of such rules.

 

[fryke]

Use smart folders instead of rules to achieve that?

 

[KenDRhyD]

Use smart folders instead of rules to achieve that?

Yes, but now I need two folders and I still need the rule. I do not want incoming mail clogging the in basket, so I still need a rule to move the incoming mail to the appropriate folder, and then I need a smart folder to collect both the incoming and outgoing emails into one folder. This works, but it clutters up the mailbox list, especially when there are several folders of this nature!

 

[KenDRhyD]

The story just keeps getting more ugly!

Not only are rules not applied to sent messages, the "contains" and "does not contain" options are the only ones that appear to work!

I suspect that the reason that the others are not working is because there some extra characters that are not apparent. I know that "@whosit.com" does not work, but that may be because there should be a ">" character at the end of the string (but adding that did not help). Very strange.

 

[macavenger]

Another reason why (for me at least) smart folders are not an option: I want to organize my e-mail such that all messages from a given contact are stored in a folder, with a sub-folder for all messages I sent to them. As far as I can tell, a smart folder can't be a subfolder. So, back to the original question, is there any way to apply rules to sent messages?

 

[graemeaustin1]

macavenger: I have been trying to get the same kind of thing sorted out for myself the last few days.

The best I have come up with is the following script:

tell application "Mail"
activate
tell application "System Events"
tell process "Mail" to keystroke "4" using command down -- needs to select the sent mailboxes
tell process "Mail" to keystroke "A" using command down -- select all messages
tell process "Mail" to keystroke "L" using command down & option down -- run all rules on the messages
end tell
end tell

I save that as a run-time script somewhere sensible and then I use Do Something When (a system preference pane) to launch the script every time Mail opens.

I have also assigned a keyboard short cut to the script (apple-alt-L) so that I can run it manually too eg when I am about to go on holiday and need to do some housekeeping before I leave (my sent folder gets deleted after seven days as I do not want a build of useless emails).

Also, I use MailTags to organise my emails into projects (viewable using smart folders) and I use rules to assign MailTags to people etc. This may not be relevant to your purpose, but I thought I would mention it in case it helps.

Let me know how you get on.

Graeme