Using Apple Mail? Want to get your emails organized? Ditch regular folders in favor of using Smart Mailboxes. Smart Mailboxes are essentially saved searches, and used correctly, can be an incredibly efficient way to manage your inbox.
Here are some ways to utilize Smart Mailboxes:
- Flag your messages that you can’t get to right away and then make a Smart Mailbox with only your flagged messages.
- Make a Smart Mailbox for any weekly or schedule email you receive.
- Create a Smart Mailbox that makes it easy to exclude what you don’t want. For example, I manage several shared inboxes that happen to get a lot of spam. I’ve created a Smart Mailbox for the emails I need to see, so I mark them as read, and then when I go back to the inbox, I sort by status (read or unread) and then delete all that have not been read as a group.
Smart Mailboxes do not move the emails from your inbox; they still exist there, but are organized such that you can view them according to your rules. If you delete an email in a Smart Mailbox, it will be deleted in your inbox because it is not a copy.
To create a new Smart Mailbox, click the + at the bottom left hand part of your Mail window and select “New Smart Mailbox…”. It will then prompt you to apply rules. To create a Smart Mailbox from a selection, click an email that you want to be part of the Mailbox and click the +.