Use Mail rules to make .Mac mail more POP-like

Mar 02, '06 05:00:00AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

Those of us who have a .Mac email account and use Mail have probably discovered by now that the Inbox on our computer for our .Mac account is a link to the .Mac server, and our email will not be automatically downloaded to our account and removed from the server as it would be with a POP account. (This type of email account is called an IMAP account).

Consequently, attachments are not automatically downloaded and, also, emails have to be deleted manually from the .Mac server. If you wish to overcome these characteristics, you can create a new mailbox folder for your incoming email ("InMail", for instance) and then create a Rule that is at the bottom of the list of Rules saying:

If any of the following conditions are met: Every message, then: Move Message to mailbox: InMail.

You might also want to add:

Play Sound ______

If any earlier Rules divert emails to other folders, you should also add the following to those Rules:

Stop evaluating rules

This setup makes your .Mac email account more like a POP account, because the action of Moving a file from the .Mac server to your computer adds it to your computer and removes it from the .Mac server, and the Mail Rule automates this action. This will not affect normal access to your .Mac email via web mail using a browser on another computer when you are away from home. The exception to that statement is if you leave Mail running on your home computer, then those messages will be automatically downloaded and moved, and won't be available.

The shortcoming of this scheme is that new emails will not be indicated by a number on the Mail icon in the Dock. However, you can have new email announced by a Sound, and the number of unread messages in your InMail folder will be indicated adjacent to the folder name in the Mail window. Therefore, you might want to set the New mail sound option under General Preferences to None, and enable the Play Sound options for other mail actions as well.

Thereafter, a Mail alert sound will only be generated if new email has survived your preceding Rules filters and has been stored in your InMail folder. (That is, assuming your other rules have not been programmed to divert email to other folders, and to generate their own alert sounds when they do so. If they have, just make sure the sounds are distinctly different for each Mail diversion action you want to know about, so you will know what type of email has arrived and where to look for it).

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