Just upgraded to Catalina, clean install on new mini. I had some smart mailboxes working briefly in Mail, but now not. They show nothing. I've deleted the old ones, but whatever type of smart mailbox I make, they do nothing. Can anyone suggest a remedy?
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Smart mailboxes in Mac Mail app
- Thread starter whitman
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Did you follow the steps (when you “Upgraded”) to bring over your old folders over the the new Mail OS?
Use Smart Mailboxes in Mail on Mac
In Mail on your Mac, use Smart Mailboxes to organize emails without actually moving the emails into other mailboxes.
support.apple.com
I tested your smart mailbox conditions and it worked fine on my system, but I only have iCloud. It sounds like you may have non-iCloud inboxes. Without reading the article satcomer added, I wonder if non-iCloud content behaves differently. Let us know if and how you resolve it.
I just tested your example smart mailbox, I selected one of my inboxes and it populated the smart mailbox. Have you resync'd your e-mail after the upgrade. Maybe you need to rebuild your e-mail.
Thanks all for the replies.
Satcomer, I didn't use migration assistant, so no, I didn't "bring over" my mail in that way. I set up my accounts afresh and had my mail populate the new setup.
Namara, I don't have icloud activated for Mail, because at the moment I don't have a need for it. I read Satcomer's link to Apple's info page on smart mailboxes, and it's a simple rundown of the functions. Nothing about icloud/non-icloud.
Taz, I have tried various resyncs and prefs dumps and rebuilds, to no avail.
Still stumped. Very frustrating, because smart mailboxes have been a key part of my Mail use on previous OS's and machines.
Satcomer, I didn't use migration assistant, so no, I didn't "bring over" my mail in that way. I set up my accounts afresh and had my mail populate the new setup.
Namara, I don't have icloud activated for Mail, because at the moment I don't have a need for it. I read Satcomer's link to Apple's info page on smart mailboxes, and it's a simple rundown of the functions. Nothing about icloud/non-icloud.
Taz, I have tried various resyncs and prefs dumps and rebuilds, to no avail.
Still stumped. Very frustrating, because smart mailboxes have been a key part of my Mail use on previous OS's and machines.
I've been finding Smart Mailboxes more than a bit unreliable. I have one setup to include the contents of a folder on one account plus the contents of a folder from a different account. The Smart Folder has 1274 emails in it, the folder on the first account has 0, and the folder on the second account has 1396. So, it's just wrong.
Mail searches are correspondingly inaccurate.
I've tried rebuilding Spotlight a few times. Things change but don't ever seem to be correct.
Mail searches are correspondingly inaccurate.
I've tried rebuilding Spotlight a few times. Things change but don't ever seem to be correct.
Better yet just many of you complainers need to get a group if you yo leave comments at Apple Feedback - Logic Pro X. Just be sure to send in your OS number and the old say ”You catch more flies with honey” When leaving a comment that might go to an engineer!
Try creating a new user account. Setup e-mail in the new user account and try creating a smart mailbox. Maybe setup e-mail minimally in the new user account for quick try. See if it has anything to do with your current user account.
My experience is, that Smart folders require properly working Spotlight. It is possible, that Spotlight is not properly indexing your Mail folders or that it is not indexing at all. Try to rebuild Spotlight index; I found OnyX really useful for this purpose. Check also, that Mail is not excluded from Spotlight indexing (in preferences).
Hello again Taz. Thanks so much for this suggestion, which I haven't tried before. Interesting. I did as you said, set up a new account just for this purpose (and set up a new bare email account specially, too, so it stayed simple). Bingo! Smart mailboxes worked. So what now: what does that tell us?
It tells me that there are 2 possibilities, something is corrupted in your user account or a third party software that you are running in your account is causing the issue.
I would start by maybe looking at what you have in your login items and stop remove all of them. Restart the computer and log back in. Then try a smart mailbox. If that works then you know it is probably some third party app. To find which on, you would need to add one app at a time into your login items and then check the smart mailbox again. I would logout and login again between adding in new entires in your login items.
Do you have any files in <your user account>/Library/LaunchAgents? If so remove them, restart the computer, log back in and try the smart mailbox again.
The last option would be to recreate your user account again or simply move to using a new user account. The latter is easier to do.
No luck having dumped the LaunchAgents.
Using a new user account sounds scary. Won't I lose all my existing stuff?
Something else to try:
Another thing to try is boot in Safe Mode (restart while pressing the shift-key). Login to your user account. Try creating a smart mailbox in safe mode. Did the smart mailbox work in safe mode?
Reboot to normal mode. Try creating a smart mailbox.
- Boot into recovery mode (restart while pressing Command-R key).
- Utilities->Terminal
- In the terminal windows enter: diskutil resetUserPermissions / 'id -u'
- Reboot
Another thing to try is boot in Safe Mode (restart while pressing the shift-key). Login to your user account. Try creating a smart mailbox in safe mode. Did the smart mailbox work in safe mode?
Reboot to normal mode. Try creating a smart mailbox.
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One option for recreating the user account would be to do a complete system backup, erase and install MacOS 10.15.5 from scratch and use Migration Assistant to bring back all your account files. If after doing that, smart mailboxes did not work then doing a manual recreate of your user account would be next.
Doing a manual user account recreate is a bit tricky because you would need to backup, delete your account and create it again from the admin account, and then manually copy over files from the backup. It can be done.
Doing a manual user account recreate is a bit tricky because you would need to backup, delete your account and create it again from the admin account, and then manually copy over files from the backup. It can be done.
In Mojave, I've got a previously troublesome Smart Mailbox that's now working but I suspect sometime soon it'll return to being inaccurate.
I went through a few steps including one I regretted. I used Onyx to rebuild the Spotlight index and the Mail index (including deleting the old Mail index). Deleting the Mail index forced a re-import of my Mail and that ended up so screwy that I finally just deleted the Mail accounts along with the actual Mail files in ~/Library/Mail. Then I re-added the accounts and let them re-populate. End result is the Smart Mailbox works again.
I'm not sure if an Onyx Spotlight rebuild would have been enough. I had tried rebuilding the Spotlight index the usual way and that didn't fix the Smart Mailbox issue.
I went through a few steps including one I regretted. I used Onyx to rebuild the Spotlight index and the Mail index (including deleting the old Mail index). Deleting the Mail index forced a re-import of my Mail and that ended up so screwy that I finally just deleted the Mail accounts along with the actual Mail files in ~/Library/Mail. Then I re-added the accounts and let them re-populate. End result is the Smart Mailbox works again.
I'm not sure if an Onyx Spotlight rebuild would have been enough. I had tried rebuilding the Spotlight index the usual way and that didn't fix the Smart Mailbox issue.
That is a good point @BrianBaughn brings up. When you rebuilt your e-mail did you logout all your e-mail accounts (which would have deleted your e-mails) and log back in to your e-nail accounts to recreate your e-mails?
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Taz, post 20. I'm always nervous about using Terminal. Is it safe to use what you suggest? What does it do, exactly?
Post 21, I think the account re-creations should be my last resort, so maybe not immediately?
Post 23, I can't actually remember if I've deleted and then re-entered all my email accounts since the smart mailbox problem arose.
I do appreciate you trying to help me, Taz, but at the moment I'm a little confused as to what to try first.
Post 21, I think the account re-creations should be my last resort, so maybe not immediately?
Post 23, I can't actually remember if I've deleted and then re-entered all my email accounts since the smart mailbox problem arose.
I do appreciate you trying to help me, Taz, but at the moment I'm a little confused as to what to try first.
The order in which I would suggest you try:
- Safe Mode from post #20. Do both the safe mode.
- resetUserPermissions from post #20. All this will do is correct any permissions that might not be correct for your user account. Sometimes if the permissions are incorrect things can start acting strange.
- Recreate your e-mail from scratch by logging out of your e-mail accounts, deleting the e-mail accounts and adding the e-mail accounts back in.
- Last resort would be to do a full system TimeMachine backup and then clean install of 10.15 and use Migration Assistant to bring your data over from the backup. This will be the easiest way to recreate your user account. The manual recreate method is tricker to do.