On May 1, 2005, at 11:00 AM, Michael Gmail wrote: > On May 1, 2005, at 12:30 AM, Eric Prentice wrote: > > >> In one sense, it seems like smart folders would be a better way to >> keep things clean and speed up the processing of incoming mail. On >> the flip side, it seems a little crazy to have all my mail sitting >> in one folder. >> > > My half-baked thought--I'm scheduled for delivery of Tiger > tomorrow, so the only hands-on experience I've had have been a few > minutes at the Apple Store--is that it would make sense to maintain > a clear distinction between the *types* of criteria you want to use > with rules and with smart folders. I expect I'll continue filtering > communications with specific business associates to their own > "dumb" folders, and maybe use smart folders to pick out messages by > age, keywords, flagged status, whether they have attachments, or > the like. > I do something similar to this. I'm on a number of e-mail lists; and each list gets filtered into a "dumb" mailbox. But I have Smart Mailboxes set up to look for messages that meet specific criteria. Here is another example. Create a group in Address book that contains the addresses of key coworkers, then crate a Smart Mailbox that shows unread e-mail from anyone in the group with the date of Today. That way you don't miss important e-mail; but your e-mail can still be filed to the appropriate "dumb" mailbox using rules. The important thing to remember about Smart Mailboxes is this from the online help: "Smart Mailboxes are mailboxes that display the results of a search. Messages in a Smart Mailbox are "virtual" messages—they don't actually exist in the Smart Mailbox itself. When you select a Smart Mailbox, you see a list of messages stored in other locations that match the search criteria you've provided. Smart Mailboxes automatically update the found list when new messages arrive that meet the search criteria. You can create a Smart Mailbox that searches a single mailbox, a selected group of mailboxes, or all mailboxes." -- T. Patrick Henebry tphenebry at fuse.net