If you use Apple Mail as your e-mail client, then you might find its Smart Mailbox feature useful for organizing your messages. As with the Finder’s smart folders, the smart mailboxes in Mail give you a quick way to access canned searches so you can only see messages from specific dates, from specific people, or in specific accounts. However, while useful, there may be times when smart mailboxes do not work properly, and may not show the contents you expect. Continue reading
Fix Mail’s smart mailboxes not working properly
5 Replies
Smart folders in OS X allow you to group files and folders by a number of different criteria, including name, type, size, content, and hundreds of similar attributes that are stored in the files’ metadata tags. This feature can be exceptionally convenient; however, there might be times when your smart folders do not work properly, and may show incorrect files, show only a small subset of files, or not show any files at all. 
Even though you might have plenty of storage available in your e-mail account, after a while of using Mail in OS X, you might find your inbox crammed with thousands of old messages. While Mail should be able to handle all of these messages, sometimes you might find it easier to only have a few messages to sort through.