[Appleman]

Is there an easy way to convert all mailboxes into Smart Mailboxes, instead of a huge manual approach?
Thanks.

[TETENAL]

No.

Smart Mailboxes aren't actual mailboxes. Their name is very misleading. Smart Mailboxes are nothing more than saved auto-updating search results.

[Appleman]

I was afraid of this. That will mean doing all by hand or make a Automator script (I was secretly hoping some one once made something like that ;-)).
Or maybe I just stick to the sub mailboxes which I did for years.

[TETENAL]

There are two problems:

What are the search criteria for the Smart Mailbox? While you can have rules that automatically sort mails into submailboxes, submailboxes need no rules attached at all. You can as well manually throw in messages there. So someone has to define the search criteria.

Where do you want the mails to be actually stored? Smart Mailboxes aren't actual mailboxes, but the messages must live somewhere. So either you create a large submailbox for everything or you move all your messages into the inbox.

Those are questions a script can not answer (at least the first one it can't). So you have to do it manually. If you have been using rules to sort your mail into submailboxes for years, then there is nothing wrong with continuing to use this system. Use Smart Mailboxes for dynamic stuff like "unread mail from my boss" or "work e-mail form the last week" or so.

[Appleman]

Tetenal, I now see the difference and therefore the problem.
Thank you for your explanation.

I guess the way to solve my initial problem (imap email doesn't sync when using more Macs lies in the fact that the email is thrown in submailboxes and thus kind of disappear.
So I either have to tell .Mac I have over two hundred sub mailboxes, or simply do what I do now: only apply rules on one (main) Mac.

[TETENAL]

You can create submailboxes "On my Mac" or on the (any of each account you have) IMAP server. If you create the submailboxes locally on one Mac then the other Macs can't see those messages any more. If you create the submailboxes on the IMAP server they are automatically on any other Mac as well.

So you would have to create the mailboxes on the IMAP server and copy the messages into those (I think you can even simply drag the folders into the .Mac section in the list on the left, but I don't want to try) and then change the sorting rules accordingly.