<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><BR><DIV><DIV>On 30-Dec-05, at 6:35 PM, david_elmo wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">On Tiger. I go to Mail, Mail Help and type "smart folder" to find out what this concept is. There are references on how to create one, how to all sorts of things but no explanation of what it is. How can help file makers overlook the simplest of questions?</FONT></P> </BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Perhaps they assume (incorrectly) that everyone knows what the whole 'smart' system is about in Tiger. Sort of like 'do we have to tell you what a window is?'. Having said that, smart folders are simply alias repositories. That is, the 'real' email message is somewhere else entirely, in the InBox, sorted to a mailbox of your choice or whatever, but, the Smart Folder/Mailbox has it's criteria set to say 'show me all mail that meets these criteria', and it does. I have only one Smart Mailbox, the rule for it is 'show any message that is unread'. VERY handy! I have TONS of mailboxes that my mail is sorted into. Rather than having to go to each individual one to read my mail, I simply click on the Smart Mailbox that I have named 'Unread'. Presto! There's all my unread mail. Once I've read it and selected another mailbox when I go back to Unread, only those that I have not read are displayed. </DIV></BODY></HTML>