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You are here: MacNN Forums > Software - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Applications > coordinating IMAP mail accounts between Mail.app and iPhone's Mail

coordinating IMAP mail accounts between Mail.app and iPhone's Mail
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OreoCookie
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Aug 24, 2012, 12:06 AM
 
I recently joined homo internetensis and got an iPhone 4S. It's a great, great piece of engineering, but I encountered a problem in my workflow: basically, I leave my MacBook Pro on constantly, and usually Mail is open. I have a variety of Rules in the Prefs, and one of them is that it moves mails from people of certain groups into various mailboxes. These mailboxes have been created more than 10 years ago and contain many thousands of messages from different accounts. Obviously most important messages are caught by a rule (e. g. sent by VIPs or something like that).

Now the problem is that I can effectively no longer receive important mails on my iPhone since after my Mac syncs with iCloud, they are moved from the Inbox to some other folder outside of iCloud's purview and disappear from my iPhone's Inbox. So essentially I have to intelligently reconfigure Mail.app's Rules.

How have you guys adapted your mail workflow to the age of mobile e-mail?
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
     
P
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Aug 24, 2012, 05:40 AM
 
I have some rules like that, but the way I do it is that the important mails stay in the Inbox and the others are field away. That way I can read the important mails everywhere, and others when I'm at the Mac.

Of course you should be able to make folders on the IMAP server and have Mail archive to them.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
mduell
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Aug 25, 2012, 12:34 PM
 
Are the mail folders client side or server side? If not the latter, why not? IMAP supports folders.
     
besson3c
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Aug 25, 2012, 03:27 PM
 
I've actually thought about creating a web service that would constantly check mail and perform server side rules, but I haven't been able to sort out the privacy, security, and legal sorts of issues with something like this.

I went down this path because I have had the same problem as you, Oreo. Unless you can switch to a mail provider that supports server side rules, I think your only option is to wait and hope that iOS Mail eventually provides the ability to create and/or respect existing client side rules.
     
OreoCookie  (op)
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Aug 26, 2012, 07:16 PM
 
Well, the thing is that switching providers is not really an option (my most-used e-mail address is a university e-mail address with their own IMAP server).

However, I will try to move to a more manual approach and see how that works. I thought there was something clever I've missed, but that doesn't seem to be the case
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
     
besson3c
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Aug 26, 2012, 08:36 PM
 
Originally Posted by OreoCookie View Post
Well, the thing is that switching providers is not really an option (my most-used e-mail address is a university e-mail address with their own IMAP server).
However, I will try to move to a more manual approach and see how that works. I thought there was something clever I've missed, but that doesn't seem to be the case
Unfortunately this is so. I have no theories as to why iOS Mail will not respect and apply the rules you set in OS X Mail and/or provide its own interface for establishing rules. Apple seems to like to randomly take out features that have been generally traditional in email clients.
     
OreoCookie  (op)
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Aug 27, 2012, 05:27 AM
 
I don't think it's just iOS: tracking and organizing Mail is complicated. There are so any configurations you need to support, and as soon as you step outside of the scenario IMAP + unlimited server-side storage, things are complicated.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
     
   
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