58. Create a Mailbox  BEFORE YOU BEGIN 54 Configure a New Mail Account 55 Find and Read Messages and Attachments
 SEE ALSO 59 Create a Smart Mailbox for Certain Types of Messages 60 Import Mailboxes from Another Email Application
58. Create a Mailbox 
Central to a modern email application is the ability to define custom mailboxes, which you can think of as "folders," to hold categorized messages. The Mail application already uses special mailboxes for incoming mail, sent messages, junk mail, and deleted messages, but you can also define your own mailboxes to hold messages related to a certain project, for instance, or for correspondence with a certain person over the years . Mail even lets you define rules that automatically direct new messages into special mailboxes, depending on certain criteria that you can define. New in Mac OS X Tiger is another kind of mailbox, the Smart Mailbox; this is a specialized grouping construct that shows any messages that match certain criteria that you define. See 59 Create a Smart Mailbox for Certain Types of Messages for more information. | 1. | Select the Parent Mailbox In the Mailboxes pane at the left side of the Mail window, select the mailbox inside which you want to create the new mailbox. For instance, to create a mailbox at the top level in an account, select the icon for that account in the mailbox listing; to create a mailbox inside an existing mailbox in that account, expand the account (using the triangle) and select the mailbox you want to use. You can also create mailboxes on your local computer, independent of any account; select the On My Mac icon, or any mailbox underneath it, to create a local mailbox. If you don't see the On My Mac icon (which only appears if you have server-based mail accounts, such as .Mac or IMAP, instead of POP), don't select any mailbox icon.  NOTE Different kinds of email accounts support different kinds of mailboxes. For instance, .Mac or Exchange email accounts allow you to create nested mailboxes, or mailboxes within mailboxes. IMAP accounts permit you to create only a single layer of mailboxes, just underneath the top level. POP accounts don't let you create mailboxes on the server at all; if you're using a POP account, you have to create all new mailboxes under the On My Mac icon, or (if you only have POP accounts) as folders in the Mailboxes list. | | 2. | Add a New Mailbox
Click the + icon at the bottom of the Mailboxes pane. Carefully read the dialog box that pops up; it tells you where exactly the new mailbox will be created. If it doesn't report the correct location, click Cancel and select the correct parent mailbox.
| | 3. | Specify a Mailbox Name Type a short name for the new mailbox. Mailbox names can't contain slashes ( / ). If you put a slash in the name of the new mailbox, Mail will actually create a subfolder within the parent mailbox, and put the new mailbox inside the subfolder; the slash separates the name of the subfolder from the name of the mailbox. This can be quite useful, depending on what you want to do. For instance, if you specify Vacations/2003 as the name of the new mailbox, Mail will create a subfolder called Vacations , and a mailbox called 2003 inside it. You can then create further mailboxes inside the Vacations foldereven if you're using an IMAP account. NOTE The only downside to using the slash to create subfolders is that you can't place messages directly into the Vacations subfolder (which shows up with a white folder icon instead of a blue one); you can only put messages into the blue 2003 mailbox folder inside the Vacations folder. | | 4. | Move Messages to the Mailbox
Click and drag any message or group of selected messages to the mailbox you want to move them to. You can automatically expand a hierarchical structure of mailboxes by dragging the messages onto the top mailbox and holding them there without releasing the button; as with spring-loaded folders in the Finder, the mailboxes expand so that you can drill down to the mailbox you want.
| | 5. | Create a Rule
Open the Mail Preferences window and click the Rules icon at the top. Click Add Rule to create a new rule. Give the rule a descriptive name so that you can find it later.
Use the + and buttons to add conditions for new messages to match. For instance, if you want Mail to identify all messages from a certain mailing list, all such messages might come from a particular address, or they might all have a certain string in the Subject line (such as [Motor-List] ). The Mail application provides many different kinds of criteria you can define, from substrings of various header fields to complex conditions, such as whether the sender is in your Address Book. You can specify as many of these conditions as you want, and you can require that new messages match all of these conditions or any single one of them.
In the Perform the following actions area of the Rules dialog box, select Move Message from the first drop-down list and then select the target mailbox from the to mailbox drop-down list. Click OK .
From this point on, all messages that match the criteria you specified in your rule are moved into the specified mailbox so that you can peruse them at your leisure.
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