Rules for incoming mail

A rule says what to do with mail that matches: from this sender, file it in that folder; with this word in the subject, add a label and mark it as read. Rules run on every message as it arrives, in the order of your list.

Make a rule#

1. 1

   Open Settings, Rules

   Settings sits at the bottom of the sidebar. Press New rule.

2. 2

   Name it

   Only you see the name. It is there to tell rules apart.

3. 3

   Say what to look for

   Choose When all of these match or When any of these match, then add conditions with Add condition. Each one looks at From, Sent to, Subject, Message, Has attachments, Kind of mail (a newsletter, a receipt or an update) or Sender is in my contacts.

4. 4

   Say what to do

   Add actions with Add action: Move to folder, Archive, Move to Trash, Add label, Flag in a colour, Mark as read, Put in bundle or Skip the Screener. A rule moves mail to one place at most, and can add several labels.

5. 5

   Decide whether to stop

   With Then stop ticked, rules further down the list do not look at mail this rule matched. Untick it to let more rules add to what this one did.

6. 6

   Press Save

   The rule works on mail that arrives from now on. To use it on mail you already have, see below.

The quickest way to a rule is from a conversation: right-click it in the list, or open it and press More actions, and pick Make a rule from this. Settings, Rules opens with From is already filled in with the sender; add what the rule should do and press Save.

How conditions match#

Capitals and extra spaces make no difference. A rule acts on the whole conversation the message belongs to, the same as pressing Archive on it would.

Order, switching off and changing#

• Rules run from the top of the list down. Drag a rule by its handle to move it, or focus the handle and press the up and down arrow keys. Move up and Move down are also in the rule's options button.
• When two rules both move the same message, the higher one wins. The same goes for the flag colour and the bundle. Labels add up.
• The switch beside a rule turns it off without deleting it. Edit opens it in place.
• Under each rule, a line says how many times it has matched and when it last did.
• You can have up to 100 rules. A rule looks for at most 10 things and does at most 8.
• If you delete a folder or a label a rule uses, the rest of that rule keeps working, and the rule says which part points at something that is gone.

Run on existing mail#

In a rule's options button, Run on existing mail applies that one rule to the newest 5,000 conversations in your Inbox and Archive, and tells you how many it changed. Snoozed conversations are left alone. On existing mail, Message contains looks at the first lines of each message rather than the whole text.

What rules never do#

• Rules never touch mail in Spam. Spam stays spam.
• Mail from somebody new waits in the Screener and rules leave it there, unless a rule that matches it says Skip the Screener. That lets that one message through, without allowing the sender, and only when the sender proves the mail really comes from them.
• A conversation you put in Trash, or snoozed, is not moved by a rule.
• There is no rule that forwards mail somewhere else. Automatic forwarding is the first thing somebody sets up in an account they broke into, so Nemi Mail does not offer it. To read another account's mail here, link that account instead.

Linked accounts#

Rules also run on new mail from Gmail, Outlook and other linked accounts, once their first import is done. What a rule does reaches the account the same way as when you do it yourself: a conversation filed in one of your folders is archived there, and a flag shows as a star or a flag without its colour. Mail from the first import is left as it was; use Run on existing mail for that.